In June 2014, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, the producers of the Hindi film Queen (2014), made an official announcement that they had sold the remake rights for the Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada versions of their film to Thiagarajan, who would make the films through his production studio, Staar Movies. Viacom put a caveat in the agreement that the principal photography of any of the films must start by 8 June 2017, else the rights would revert to Viacom.[4]