The reunion he never went to — eight true things about how 96 got made

96 is a film about a school reunion. The man who wrote it didn’t go to his.

That is not a neat line invented after the fact — it is how the film started. Eight things about the making of 96 that are stranger than the film itself, and all of them on the record.

1. He skipped the reunion. Then he made a film about one.

Director C. Prem Kumar missed his own school reunion. Afterwards he got talking to classmates who had gone, and they kept circling back to two people who’d been there. He became fascinated enough to go and find them himself, meet them, and build a story around what he learned.

Every reunion has that one pair everybody watches across the room. Prem Kumar heard about his second-hand and spent the next three years turning it into a film.

2. The script was written in 20 days, by candlelight, during the Chennai floods

December 2015. Chennai was underwater, the power was out, and Prem Kumar was stuck in his apartment with nothing to do. He wrote the whole thing in twenty days.

The flood that shut a city down produced one of Tamil cinema’s most loved love stories. He has since described those candlelit nights as exactly what the writing needed — no phone, no distraction, nowhere to be.

3. It was almost a Hindi film. With Abhishek Bachchan.

Prem Kumar originally imagined 96 in Hindi, with Abhishek Bachchan as Ram. The problem was ordinary and completely fatal: he had no way in. No contacts, no route to pitch it to the actor.

So it stayed in Tamil, and Vijay Sethupathi became Ram. Bachchan has since spoken publicly about 96 as one of the films that got away.

4. The story kept shrinking

The first version spanned a week. Then it became 24 hours. In the end, almost all of 96 happens across a single night.

Everything that makes the film ache — that nothing can be undone, that morning is coming whether they like it or not — comes from that last cut.

5. The watchman was cast because watchmen are secretly children

For the school watchman, Prem Kumar wanted veteran actor Janagaraj, and his reasoning was oddly specific: school watchmen, he said, tend to have the same child-like behaviour and innocence as the kids they’re guarding. He wanted an actor who already had that in him rather than one who’d have to act it.

He turned up at Janagaraj’s house with the script. Janagaraj said yes almost immediately.

6. Young Jaanu got the part because of an uncle in Dubai

The shoot was held up while the team hunted for younger versions of Ram and Jaanu. They eventually found two debutants — Aditya Bhaskar, son of actor M. S. Bhaskar, and Gouri G. Kishan.

Gouri heard about the casting call from her uncle. In Dubai. She went on to play the role again in the Telugu remake — the only cast member to cross over.

7. “Kaathalae Kaathalae” was never supposed to be a song

Govind Vasantha wrote it as an instrumental cue. It wasn’t meant for the soundtrack at all.

Then it turned up under the teaser, and the audience simply refused to let it go. The requests didn’t stop, so Vasantha went back and reworked it into a full three-minute track for both the album and the film. The song people most associate with 96 exists because viewers wouldn’t stop asking for it.

8. The yellow kurta came out of the costume designer’s own wardrobe

Subhashree Kaarthik Vijay was a debutant costume designer and a close friend of the director. Asked to dress Jaanu simply, she built the look out of how she herself dresses — kurta, jeans, stole, nothing competing for attention.

The yellow was deliberate. Much of 96 happens at night, and the colour keeps Trisha bright and separate from the dark around her.

Subhashree has said she never expected the kurta to take off. It did. A Chennai textile store started selling the outfit, and it turned up on dolls, memes and PUBG avatars. A debut costume designer became a name overnight because she dressed a character the way she dresses herself.

Sources: Wikipedia — ’96 (film) · Film Companion — Prem Kumar on the candlelit nights · ETV Bharat — the roles Abhishek Bachchan missed · The News Minute — Gouri Kishan · South India Fashion — the yellow kurta

Want the outfit? We’ve broken Jaanu’s yellow kurti down piece by piece, with prices and where to buy — at NEST LOOKS.