Mohan Raja

Mohan Raja
Born	Raja Mohan
Other names	M. Raja, Jayam Raja
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter
Years active	2001–present
Relatives	Jayam Ravi (brother)

Mohan Raja is an Indian film director, who has primarily worked in the Tamil film industry. As of 2015, he has directed eight films, all but one being remakes. After making his debut with the Telugu-language film Hanuman Junction (2001), he went on to remake several successful Telugu films into Tamil, beginning with Jayam (2003), which also launched his brother, Ravi, as a leading actor. Raja then collaborated with Ravi for three consecutive commercially successful films, M. Kumaran S/O Mahalakshmi (2004), Something Something... Unakkum Enakkum (2006) and Santosh Subramaniam (2008), all of which were remakes of Telugu films. After a period of mixed success, he returned with his first original script, Thani Oruvan (2015), which went on to become amongst the most profitable Tamil films of 2015.

As a result of his father's involvement in the film industry, Raja regularly visited Vauhini Studios as a teenager to watch his father work as a film editor. Likewise, Mohan's role as the president of the Dubbing Film Producers Association meant that Raja was exposed to world cinema, before he attended the Film Institute to complete his education. He made his directorial debut through the Telugu action comedy film, Hanuman Junction (2001), a remake of the Malayalam film Thenkasipattanam (2000). Featuring an ensemble cast led by Arjun and Jagapati Babu, the film told the story of two childhood friends in a village who fall in love with the same woman and the project went on to become one of the most profitable Telugu films of the year. Raja won positive reviews for his work, with Jeevi of Idlebrain.com stating "credit goes to Raja for narrating the story in such a way that all the viewers understand the complex and randomly changing relationships clearly" and that "the film looks solid in most of the scenes", while adding that Raja knows "the mass pulse". Raja then moved on to make his first Tamil film, Jayam (2003), which was a remake of the successful 2002 Telugu film of the same name. A romantic thriller set in a village, the film was produced by Raja's father Mohan and starred his younger brother, Ravi, in the lead role alongside Sadha, who had featured in the original version. Jayam opened to mixed reviews, with a critic from The Hindu stating the film gave a sense of "déjà vu" but added that Raja's "treatment is interesting in patches". The film went on to become a surprise success at the box office, and prompted both Raja and Ravi to adopt "Jayam" to their stage names as a prefix, while their home production studio was renamed Jayam Company.

...
Wikipedia