Rajinikanth’s Call Seals Soori’s Bet on Mandaadi

Rajinikanth rang Soori on September 14 to praise Mandaadi, four days after the coastal sports drama opened against Karthi’s Sardar 2. Soori posted a photo of himself on the phone and wrote that the Superstar had watched the film and loved it. The call landed on a holiday Monday, while the 154-minute sailboat drama was already holding in Tamil Nadu.

By then the wager behind the film was no longer theoretical. Tracker Sacnilk had Mandaadi at Rs 50.25 crore India net after six days, with a worldwide gross of Rs 69.43 crore, already higher than Garudan, Soori’s previous high as a lead on the same books.

Soori Posted the Call Before the Numbers Caught Up

The post went up at 12:31 GMT on September 14. Soori tagged Rajinikanth and put the phone in the frame, the kind of snapshot Tamil cinema treats as a certificate.

“Superstar Rajinikanth Sir watched and loved our #Mandaadi. His heartfelt call means the world to me and our entire team,” he wrote, then added in Tamil that those words were the greatest blessing he had received.

Superstar Rajinikanth Sir watched and loved our #Mandaadi. His heartfelt call means the world to me and our entire team. This picture captured the priceless moment of hearing his voice on the other end! ❤️🙏@rajinikanth sir 🙏🙏🙏

அவருடைய வார்த்தைகள் எனக்குக் கிடைத்த… pic.twitter.com/RYNPUzFqUj

— Actor Soori (@sooriofficial) September 14, 2026

Producer house RS Infotainment thanked Rajinikanth for his words the same afternoon, calling him “the only one” and “the Super One.” Rajinikanth did not post his own note. The public record of the conversation is Soori’s face on the line, and a studio happy to let that image travel.

A private call from Rajinikanth still works like a public stamp in this industry. It arrived after the weekend, not before the opening, which is why it reads as confirmation rather than a rescue. The sharper credit sits with the scripts Soori has taken since 2023. The phone call is what made that shift visible to people who still remember him as the man eating parottas for a laugh.

After Viduthalai, the Comedy Offers Stopped

Ramalakshmanan Muthuchamy, billed as Soori, spent a decade as a comic sidekick after Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu in 2009, the film that stuck him with the nickname Parotta Soori. He has described working as a labourer for Rs 20 a day before that break, and he later shared the screen with Rajinikanth in Annatthe in 2021, still in the supporting register.

Vetrimaaran changed the job description in 2023. Soori was cast as constable Kumaresan in Viduthalai Part 1, a lead part he has said he first approached as a character role. “Beyond comedy, he brought a different kind of acting out of me,” Soori said after Mandaadi opened. He has also been plain about the trade-off: after Viduthalai, the comedy offers stopped, and the calls that came were for leads.

He followed that turn with Garudan and Kottukkaali in 2024, then the family film Maaman. Mandaadi is the sixth lead, and the one that asked him to look least like the old Soori. He grew a thick beard and long hair for Muthukaali, a former racer who has been hiding in Chennai as a lifeguard. Critic Bhuvanesh Chandar wrote that the sidekick who gobbled parottas is gone, and that this new Soori can ride the waves the way Vetrimaaran once used cockfighting in Aadukalam.

That is the bet. Tamil comedians who try to become heroes often get more screen time in the same jokes. Soori went the other way and took parts that made the old act unusable. Rajinikanth ringing him after a sailboat drama is the unofficial scorecard for that choice.

What a Mandaadi Does Along 100 Kilometres of Coast

Director Mathimaran Pugazhendhi, a former assistant to Vetrimaaran, has said he wanted a sport Tamil cinema had not already chewed through. A friend pointed him to a sailing-boat race run along a 100-kilometre stretch of the Tamil Nadu coast. He is from Cuddalore. The ocean was the brief.

In the film, a mandaadi is not a mascot. Mathimaran defined the title as the leader of a fishing expedition, the person who reads currents, wind and fish. The English gloss on the title is Sea Wanderer. The race, he said, is held once a year, mostly at festivals, with six-member crews.

HOW THE RACE WORKS IN THE STORY

• The job: A mandaadi leads a fishing crew and is expected to pass that sea knowledge to the next group of men.
• The rule: Crews take the engine off for the race, so the sport doubles as practice for getting home when fuel runs out.
• The feud: Muthukaali comes back to train local fishermen after his old friend Saattappuli starts hiring racers from other towns.
• The stake: Winning is revenge, business, and the honour of the Mandaadi Vagaiyara clan, not a trophy shot.

That last point is the film’s argument about the sport itself. Mentor Machamuni, played by Sathyaraj, treats the race as a way of life, preparation for a future in which coastal men still have to work the ocean without engines. Saattappuli, played by Telugu actor Suhas in his Tamil debut (Vetrimaaran dubbed him), builds a champion team, the Tsunami Riders, by pulling talent from outside. The FAO has long documented kattumaram rafts used on this coast, from Puri down to Kanyakumari, as the most common traditional fishing craft in the region. Mandaadi is doing something narrower: putting a local sailboat contest on a mainstream Tamil screen and tying it to who is allowed to learn the craft.

Mathimaran shot in Ramanathapuram, with the team training at Thondi with local racers. Critic Latha Srinivasan gave the film 3.5 out of 5 and called it an engaging coastal sports drama. Other notices praised the water work and the acting, then flagged a plot you can see coming. The Hindu’s Chandar went further on the parallel: what his guru did with cockfighting, Mathimaran is trying with sailboats. The races, he wrote, have no dull stretch, but the film is not one you watch only for the boats.

The Sea Did Not Follow the Shot List

Soori has called Mandaadi the riskiest film he has done. He said he spent more than 100 days at sea and still could not fully read its nature. Swimming out there, he said, was a different skill from the pool work he knew, and he trained harder than usual so he could handle boats for real.

Mathimaran had sold him a softer plan. At the Chennai audio launch on August 28, Soori recalled being told that 80 percent of the shoot would happen in a swimming pool. They did not stay in the pool. A production note during filming said he did the high-risk sea action without a body double. Stunt director Peter Hein spent nearly 60 days on the water work.

THE MANDAADI SHOOT

1. January 2025: RS Infotainment confirms a Soori lead with Mathimaran Pugazhendhi, Vetrimaaran attached as creative producer.
2. April 18, 2025: Soori reveals the title Mandaadi for his sixth film as lead.
3. May 2025: Filming begins, with later schedules in Ramanathapuram, Pudukottai and Thanjavur.
4. October 2025: A camera boat capsizes; the team loses equipment worth almost Rs 1 crore and shooting pauses.
5. April 2026: Production wraps after the sea unit is rebuilt around weather, wind and live sailboats.
6. September 10, 2026: The film opens in Tamil and Telugu, including IMAX and Dolby Cinema, against Sardar 2.
7. September 14, 2026: Rajinikanth watches it and calls Soori; Vetrimaaran, after a special screening, labels it a blockbuster.

Mathimaran has been blunt about why the water unit was slow. An angle change that takes 30 seconds on land can take hours at sea, because boats drift when the wind shifts and you cannot just call a retake. He said Soori did not play a fisherman so much as try to become one. “He never approached it as, ‘I am playing a fisherman.’ He wanted to become that person,” the director said.

Elred Kumar produced under RS Infotainment. G. V. Prakash Kumar scored it. S. R. Kathir shot it. Red Giant Movies took Tamil Nadu; Mythri Movie Distributors took Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Netflix has the streaming rights once the theatrical run is done. That is not the image people will remember. The image is Soori on a sailboat, then Soori on a phone.

Six Days, Rs 50.25 Crore Net, Past Garudan

Mandaadi opened on Thursday, September 10, into a Vinayagar Chaturthi weekend and a direct clash with Sardar 2. Sacnilk logged the smaller film 4.7 percent ahead of Karthi’s film on India gross that first day, and called it Soori’s biggest opener. Tamil Nadu carried the weight. The Telugu dub added a second engine.

Monday, September 14, was a regional holiday. India gross only slipped from Rs 15.25 crore on Sunday to Rs 13.15 crore, a 13.8 percent dip that trade desks treat as a pass. Tuesday, with the holiday gone, India gross fell to Rs 5.15 crore, a 60.8 percent drop. The six-day pile was still enough to clear a mark Soori had not crossed as a lead.

MANDAADI INDIA NET, FIRST SIX DAYS

Sacnilk’s running sheet puts that Rs 50.25 crore India net beside Rs 58.78 crore India gross and Rs 10.65 crore overseas, for Rs 69.43 crore worldwide. Tamil Nadu’s Rs 41.75 crore gross is the spine. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana added Rs 10.02 crore, Karnataka Rs 4.85 crore, Kerala Rs 1.55 crore, and the rest of India Rs 0.61 crore.

Garudan, Soori’s 2024 lead, closed at Rs 59.50 crore worldwide on the same tracker. Mandaadi is already ahead of that lifetime total, and it is still in theatres. That is the commercial half of the bet. The other half is the phone call, which costs nothing and moves a different public.

Vetrimaaran Waited Through 15 to 20 Films for This

Vetrimaaran did not only produce the film in the credits. After a special screening he talked about the assistants who had come through his sets. He said he had watched the box office of nearly 15 to 20 films, from his own years as an assistant through to the moment those assistants directed.

Since the time I worked as an assistant director, I have closely followed the box office performance of nearly 15 to 20 films until my assistants became directors. But this is the first ‘blockbuster’ film I have seen. I am extremely happy about it.

Vetrimaaran, filmmaker, after a special screening of Mandaadi

He also sent a more specific note to the people who put the film on the water. “I extend my heartfelt wishes to director Mathimaran, actor Soori and producer Elred Kumar. It takes tremendous courage to work with such a subject with this level of dedication,” he said.

Mathimaran’s own pitch was never only the race. “At its heart, the film is about second chances, redemption and how difficult it is to win back what you have lost,” he said before release. That line fits the character and the actor. Muthukaali comes home after 20 years. Soori is three years into a lead career that closed the comedy window behind him.

Rajinikanth is due back on October 15 with Jailer 2, Nelson Dilipkumar’s sequel for Sun Pictures. He watched a sailboat film in the middle of that run-up and took the time to dial the lead. Soori is still in theatres with a drama that has already outrun Garudan on Sacnilk and picked up the one blessing Tamil cinema still treats as informal canon. The call is on the record. The boats are still racing.