After a hiatus, A.R. Rahman is set to make a comeback in Hollywood. The Oscar-winning composer took a long break as his mother Kareema Begum was ill for eight years. Rahman and his family decided to spend as much time with her in India as possible. She died in December.
“It was a blessing that we got to live with her and all my sisters and me and our family,” Rahman told Variety‘. “And so that was definitely one aspect, which held me in India and I also wanted to set up my studio here.”
“I’m working on certain things, but it doesn’t need me there, and I can do it from here,” says Rahman. The composer can’t reveal any of the Hollywood titles he is working on at the moment because of confidentiality reasons.
Rahman has partnered with Indian producer Mani Ratnam the two-part historic drama film Ponniyin Selvan, an adaptation of Kalki Krishnamurthy’s epic five-volume novel. “Every movie I work with Mani Ratnam, we still work with that same enthusiasm,” Rahman said to Variety in the interview. “We’re almost finished on the songs, thanks to lockdown.” Considering that the film is set in the days of the Chola empire, the Indian composer has used period instruments. “In my case, I keep changing till the end, tweak, tweak, tweak,” said Rahman.
Another film that Rahman is composing for is Blessy’s Aadu Jeevitham, starring Prithviraj Sukumaran as an Indian abused migrant worker, who is forced to herd goats in Saudi Arabia to survive in a desert. His other projects include Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s No Land’s Man, starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Aanand L. Rai’s romantic drama Atrangi Re, with Dhanush and Akshay Kumar, and R. Ajay Gnanamuthu’s psychological thriller Cobra, starring Vikram and former cricketer Irfan Pathan.