Even as the remastered version of the romantic horror movie Devadoothan, starring Mohanlal in the lead, continues to mesmerise the audience after its recent release, some of the fans of the movie were wondering why scenes of actor Jagathy Sreekumar were removed from the movie.
The director of the movie, Sibi Malayil, revealed that the character was not even part of the original version, but was added because the audience had certain expectations from a movie headlined by Mohanlal.
“It was our mistake to include such a role in the movie. There was a misconception at that time. Considering Mohanlal's stardom then, the audience had certain expectations from his movies. If you look at the story, you realize that there are fewer scenes involving comedy. Besides, Mohanlal was not a larger-than-life hero in Devadoothan; so we thought of adding a few scenes to satisfy the audience then.”
The director said they had also planned a fight sequence that had nothing to do with the story. “The only reason to consider the fight sequence was to elevate Mohanlal's character. Jagathy's role was primarily for humor. It didn't support the main story. However, Jagathy did it brilliantly, and some people enjoyed those scenes. But those scenes weren't necessary for this story,” Sibi Malayil explained.
He said in the remastered version, the makers chose to correct the decision taken back when the movie was made in 2000. “The most important thing for this movie was just to tell the story. We edited out 34 minutes. The movie, which was 2 hours and 46 minutes long, is now 2 hours and 12 minutes long.”
He said nobody who watched the remastered version of Devadoothan said said they missed Jagathy's character. “It was after the movie finished that they remembered such scenes. We also cut out Mohanlal's initial fight scene. The second fight scene was also cut. This was a very clever editing decision. The movie uses a mixed soundtrack. If you cut scenes with dialogue, the music would also be lost. So, it required very clever editing,” he added.