S. Shankar

Shankar Shanmugam (born 17 August 1963), credited as S. Shankar or his mononym Shankar, is an Indian filmmaker who predominantly works in Tamil cinema.

He is one of the most prolific and highest paid film directors in India.

His films typically deal with the contemporary social issues, vigilante themes and the usage of state of the art technology and VFX.

He has won one National Film Award, four Filmfare Award South and six Tamil Nadu State Film Awards in his career.

Shankar was born on 17 August 1963 in Kumbakonam, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu to Muthulakshmi and Shanmugam.

He completed his diploma in mechanical engineering from Central Polytechnic College and worked in an typewriting company before entering the film industry.

He was roped into the film industry as a screenwriter by S. A. Chandrasekhar, who accidentally saw the drama stage shows made by Shankar and his team.

Though, he wanted to be an actor, he chose to be a director instead and became one of the leading directors in Indian cinema.

Shankar began his career as an actor in the films Vasantha Raagam in 1986 and Seetha.

He later became an assistant to film directors like S. A. Chandrasekhar and Pavithran.

His first break in Hindi films was as an assistant director to S. A. Chandrasekhar in Jai Shiv Shankar (1990) produced by Rajesh Khanna.

His final movie with S. A. Chandrasekhar was Nanbargal.

Upon release, it became one of the highest grossing Tamil films of the 1990s.

He made his debut as a director in the film Gentleman (1993), for which he won the Filmfare Best Director Award and the Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Director.

He usually collaborates with composer A. R. Rahman, both having done over 11 films together.

In 1993, he made his directional debut through Gentleman.

Starring Arjun Sarja in the lead role, the film was made with a higher budget in Tamil cinema during that time, won positive response and became a blockbuster.

A. R. Rahman, the film's music composer continued to work with Shankar in his following 6 directorial ventures.

His second film Kadhalan, a romantic-action film was released in the following year, had Prabhu Deva in the lead role.

Two of his films Indian (1996) and Mudhalvan (1999), which deal with social and political issues, was commercially very successful and also submitted by India for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but neither earned a nomination.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by M. G. R. University.

In 1996, he collaborated with Kamal Haasan for Indian.

It was dubbed in Hindi as Hindustani and Telugu as Bharateeyudu.

The film was selected as the country's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Following Indian, Shankar began work on Jeans, which released in 1998 and became the most expensive film in Indian cinema at that time with a budget of ₹ 200 million.

He made his production debut through Mudhalvan (1999).

Arjun Sarja joined the project as lead actor and the Movie was a Hit.

Shankar opted to remake Mudhalvan in Hindi as Nayak, thus making his Bollywood debut.

Nayak, released in September 2001, was declared a "Flop" by Box Office India due to the poor marketing, its high budget and distribution price.

It went on to gain a cult status despite not doing well at the box office.

Shankar started to work on his next film which was supposed to be a science fiction film titled Robot that was slated to have Kamal Haasan in the lead, the project was stalled since Kamal Haasan was busy with other projects.

Later, the project could not move forward due to budgeting problems.

His musical entertainer film Boys was released in 2003, which received mixed response from the critics and audience, prompting it to do only average business.

However A. R. Rahman's soundtrack for the film became a major sensation.

His psychological thriller Anniyan, featuring Vikram in three distinct characters (Ambi, Remo & Anniyan) was released in 2005 with highly critical and commercial success.

After Anniyan, Shankar teamed up with Rajinikanth on Sivaji (2007), the most expensive Indian film at that time.

He was paid with a record salary of ₹100 million for the film.

It went on to become one of the highest grossing Tamil films at that time and the highest grosser of the year.

He again collaborated with Rajinikanth for a science-fiction film Enthiran (2010), which again turned out to be highest grossing Tamil film at that time and also its sequel 2.0 (2018), is the seventh highest-grossing film in India and the tenth highest-grossing Indian film worldwide.

It is also the highest-grossing Indian film of 2018.