4 min readHyderabadUpdated: Jul 7, 2026 01:08 PM IST
Run made Madhavan an action hero, gave Lingusamy the biggest hit of his career and refused to leave either man’s legacy. It was also never supposed to be their film. Ahead of its re-release on July 10, the director has revealed that the 2002 blockbuster was written for Vijay, sent to AVM through his father S A Chandrasekhar, and turned down in a meeting the actor was never told about.
During a recent interview, Lingusamy recalled that after the success of his debut Aanandham, the story of Run reached AVM through Chandrasekhar. “At that time, producers would only go to AVM. S A Chandrasekhar sent the story there and a meeting was called,” he said in an interview with Galatta Plus.
“Saravanan sir heard the story and liked it very much. He said this is love with action. But they were making Thamizhan then, and he felt that after a film like Thamizhan, this one would look small. So they decided not to do it. And Vijay sir was never told about it.”
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The director made no attempt to hide what the film meant to him. “Of all the films I was supposed to do with Vijay sir, this was the most important one. I missed it. And after that, he went on to do the remake of Okkadu, which became Ghilli,” he said.
The rejection turned out to be Tamil cinema’s gain twice over. Run went to Madhavan, then known almost entirely for romantic roles, and became his first action film and one of the biggest hits of 2002, running past 175 days. Vijay’s Ghilli, released in 2004, became the film that turned him into a mass hero.
And in a twist Lingusamy himself points to, both films came from the same producer, A M Rathnam, who backed Run after AVM passed and whose Sri Surya Movies later made Ghilli.
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Vijay, it turns out, noticed what he had missed. Lingusamy recounted a party at Le Meridien hosted for a Rajinikanth film around the time Run’s hit talk was spreading. “Vijay sir walked in and everyone’s attention was on him. He saw me standing at a distance and came straight to me, shook my hand and said, ‘You have done a fantastic job.’ I will never forget that,” he said.
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The interview also settled a small piece of trivia: the title came from the producer. “Run was Rathnam sir’s title. I had been thinking of something around the tagline Kadhalum Veeramum. One day he simply asked, how is Run? The moment he said it, we knew. The lettering was then designed to look like it was in motion,” Lingusamy said.
More than two decades on, the film still follows him around. “Wherever I go, a mall, a theatre, the airport, strangers walk up to me and say, ‘Sir, please make another film like Run.’ I have been hearing this for fifteen years. I believe Run has its own audience even today,” he said. The re-release is being handled by Jagathambe Films’ Balaji, a self-declared fan of the film, and Lingusamy has one viewing planned for himself. “I have never watched the full film in a theatre after its release. This time I will take my mother and watch it with her from start to finish,” he said.
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On Vijay’s larger journey since, the director said, “Nobody imagined he would come this far and make an impact this big. He showed up and did it,” he said. As for his own next step, Lingusamy revealed he has a completed script he describes as a new-age film in the Sandakozhi space, awaiting the right lead.
Director Lingusamy has revealed that Run, was written for Vijay and rejected at AVM without the actor ever hearing the story, before Madhavan turned it into one of 2002's biggest hits.