Thug Life starring Kamal Haasan in the lead is an upcoming Tamil movie that marks the star actor's reunion with ace filmmaker Mani Ratnam. Thug Life releases on June 5, 2025, 38 years since Kamal Haasan-Mani Ratnam's first film Nayakan (1987)—a loose adaptation of director Francis Ford Coppola's epic crime drama, The Godfather (1972). 

In Nayakan, Kamal Haasan played a Mumbai-based Tamil don named Sakthivel "Velu" Naicker, a character inspired from real life Indian crime boss Varadarajan Mudaliar. Kamal Haasan's character is shown to be dead at the end of the movie. In the upcoming movie Thug Life, Kamal Haasan also plays a crime boss, except this time he is named 'Rangaraya Sakthivel Naicker', with ties to global underworld syndicates.

With suspicions lingering if Thug Life was a sequel to Nayakan, Kamal Haasan has opened up about the same in an interview with THR India. Kamal Haasan described Nayakan as a film with 'deeper layers to the emptiness of violence'. He said that song Thenpandi Cheemayile with lyrics by Pulamaipithan, came from the idea that this lullaby 'is a consolation that justice is only promised never delivered' in the Nayakan world. "That is what 'Godfather' is all about", Kamal Haasan added. 

"The American promise never fulfilled. So a group of—you can call them Italians, or residual romans— they came back, and did that. That's what we were trying to arrive on with an Indian ethos (in 'Nayakan'). The violence was inculcated (in Velu Naicker), and it (his world) was all about macho killings with no space for mothers. So 'Thenpandi Cheemayile' was him talking to himself. I thought it was a great inner layer in the film (Nayakan)", Kamal Haasan said.

Comparatively Thug Life has Kamal Haasan's character Shakthivel Naicker revelling in violence and terming the thug life calling his destiny. Commenting on the same Kamal Haasan said,

 "We are reflecting (on whether violence is cool in Thug Life)..We will not make a film that says violence pays.  That is currency which will run out. When you loose your violence, it will be gone because another violent man will come and take it and you will be left empty. That is there in 'The Godfather Part III (1990)'. We (Mani Ratnam and Kamal Haasan) are going through the same graduation ceremony (with Nayakan and Thug Life) that (filmmaker) Coppola went through (with The Godfather I & III)."