Books on Tamil movie scripts fly off shelves at Chennai Book Fair

CHENNAI: Books on movie screenplays are selling like hotcakes at this year's Chennai Book Fair in Nandanam. Many Tamil filmmakers such as Lokesh Kanagaraj, Vetrimaaran, Mysskin, 'Jai Bhim' Gnanavel and Vasanth have released their script books through leading publishing houses.
Ever since social media influencers posted about these books, they have become an instant hit among youngsters and movie buffs.These books, which cost around 150 to 600, are already seeing in spike in sales.
Film script books, which have been popular in Hollywood for quite some time, have now been made available in Tamil. Some bookstores here have already sold nearly 1,000 copies of these books in the first three days of the book fair. Readers from cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai have also made bookings online.
Arun Mo of Pure Cinema, a Chennai-based cinema bookstore, said, “We have collected handwritten scripts of leading filmmakers and some of them even have storyboards sketched by them.
It helps film students and aspiring filmmakers learn a lot about the directors' thought process and what it takes to write a screenplay”. “It is like reading an unedited or uncut version of a film. Not all scenes in a script book find a place in the final version of a movie.
Some of them are either cut due to run time or censor issues and makers themselves wouldn't have shot a few sequences due to practical constraints. It is intriguing to read such content and gives a different perspective when we rewatch the movie," said V Ranjith, a film student from Taramani.
Some of these directors have planned to use a portion of the revenue generated through book sales for conducting movie workshops and setting up eateries where film technicians can have food at a subsidised rate.
In addition to script books, other novels written by filmmakers have also received a decent response, say book stall owners. For instance, stores have sold over 500 copies of director Mari Selvaraj's 'Mmarakkave Ninaikiren' and 'Thamirabaraniyil Kollapadathavargal'.