Ramana (director)

Ramana penned a series of film scripts featuring serious off-beat stories and approached producers with little luck, hoping to land an offer. He spent several years narrating the script of a proposed film titled Karkaalam to actors and then finally agreed terms with Prakash Raj to play the lead role during 1996, but no financiers eventually backed the project.^[1] After failing to establish himself as a director who could be funded to make films with serious themes, he felt that he should make a series of commercially viable films in the masala genre before diversifying into serious subjects.^[2] Ramana's first release was Thirumalai (2003), an action-masala venture featuring Vijay, which took a large opening at the box office and performed well commercially. He briefly began work on Parthasarathy, a project starring Vijayakanth in the lead but the film was later stalled.^[3] Despite receiving several offers to remake the film in Telugu, he chose to make Sullan (2004), an action film featuring Dhanush as the main hero, which was a flop at the box office. His next film, Aathi (2006) an action-masala venture featuring Vijay for the second time, took a large opening at the box office but turned out to be a disaster incurring ₹5 crore loss.

In 2007, he revealed that he was simultaneously working on a Telugu film featuring Mahesh Babu in the lead role, while Sarath Kumar had agreed to finance and star in his next Tamil film. However, neither of the projects materialised.^[4] He then briefly forayed into acting and was approached for a role in S. A. Chandrasekhar's Pandhayam (2008), before playing a pivotal role in an unreleased film titled Kuthirai.^[5] In 2011, it was reported that Ramana was suffering from throat cancer and would take a break from films. In July 2013, it was announced that he had recovered from the disease but had lost his voice permanently during his recovery.^[6]