Rathna Kumar's 29 Sets May 8 Release with Vidhu and Preity Asrani

Rathna Kumar’s 29 has its release date locked: May 8. The director of Meyaadha Maan, Aadai and Gulu Gulu staged a curtain-raiser called Welcome to the World of 29 at the Leela Palace in Chennai, screening a glimpse from the film and putting the cast on stage together for the first time. Vidhu, last seen as the antagonist Michael opposite Suriya in Retro and as Shaitaani in Karthik Subbaraj’s Jigarthanda DoubleX, plays the lead, Sathya. Preity Asrani plays Viji.

29 is a romance about a 29-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman, written and structured by Rathna Kumar as ten chapters from a single year of Sathya’s life. The story sits in a 2010 backdrop, a deliberate choice the team kept returning to. The period framing, they said, gives the relationship room to feel unhurried in a way most modern romances don’t. Sean Roldan composes; Mathesh Manickam shoots. Mahendran, Avinash, Shenaz Fathima and Prem Kumar round out the cast.

The producing setup is the unusual part. 29 comes out under Stone Bench Studio in tandem with Lokesh Kanagaraj’s new banner G Squad, with Kaarthikeyan Santhanam, Karthik Subbaraj and Lokesh credited together. White Carpet Films distributes across Tamil Nadu, AP International holds overseas rights, and the soundtrack is on Sony Music. For Lokesh, this is the first film he is producing rather than presenting. The Master and Leo director told the audience he had not seen a single frame and had not heard the story, only Rathna Kumar’s word. He called it blind faith.

The story’s origin is unusually low-stakes. Rathna Kumar described writing a Facebook post on a rainy night about a boy and a girl under one umbrella, an exchange in dialogue rather than a scene description. The comments section pushed him for what came next. A second post, then a third. When a friend called and told him to delete the posts before someone else turned them into a film, he stopped posting and started writing. Karthik Subbaraj has been in the picture since the Aviyal anthology days. Their first feature together was Meyaadha Maan, born from Rathna’s short film Madhu sitting alongside Lokesh’s Kalam in that 2014 anthology.

Vidhu, whom Karthik Subbaraj first noticed on Jigarthanda DoubleX and pushed onto Suriya’s Retro after that, said the casting was not a favour. Rathna Kumar made him audition. He spoke about the production wrap making the unit emotional in a way he had not expected, and about Sean Roldan’s score being the kind of luck a debutant lead does not usually get. Preity Asrani, whose casting Vidhu made a point of crediting, described Viji as the part that reads small on paper and turns punishing on set. An ordinary 21-year-old whose 21 has more direction in it than Sathya’s 29.

Sean Roldan, who also sings on the latest single Pollatha Aasaigal, said he has scored a long string of love films and Rathna Kumar’s writing was the first in a while that surprised him. Karthik Subbaraj, half-jokingly, said he is now mostly the creative half of Stone Bench while Kaarthikeyan Santhanam runs the rest, and that the next slate from the studio will keep working with first-time leads.

29 lands in a difficult release window. A Dhanush film opens on April 30 and Suriya’s Karuppu follows on May 14, with 29 squeezed between two larger campaigns. The four singles released so far have travelled; the trailer is still to come. Kaarthikeyan Santhanam framed the May 8 date as a self-identity bet, which is also what the film, in his framing, is about.