Chennai, Nov 26 : The makers of director Mithun Balaji's Tamil psychological thriller 'Stephen', featuring actors Gomathi Shankar and Smruthi Venkat in the lead, have now disclosed that the spark for the eagerly awaited film came from a short film that they had made earlier.

Talking to IANS exclusively, director Mithun Balaji and actor Gomathi Shankar, who has also co written the script for the film which is to stream on the OTT platform Netflix from December 5, said that a short film that was based on the character of Stephen had gone on to win awards and that inspired them to take this project up.

"In around 2020, we did a short film, which we co-wrote. That short film is based on Stephen. We got a very good reception for the short film across short film festivals. The short film was about this character and people liked it. We did not really think people would give much about serial killers and we treated it a bit differently," explained Gomathi Shankar.

How was it different? "There was no violence in that short film. It was about 10 minutes long. And it was a conversation by a serial killer with a psychiatrist. People found it interesting. We got a few awards for it which really encouraged us. The short film won awards for best actor, best director and best film and we were very surprised but we were very thrilled. So, we thought why not make a sequel for a short film," he added.

"As we co-wrote that script, we found it had a run time of 40 minutes. We bounced that script off our team comprising of aspiring directors and writers and everybody seemed to like it. One person in that team suggested that we make it into a feature film. 'You guys have written for 40 minutes. If you just push it further, it will become a feature.' And we were like, 'okay.' We thought we'd add content for 15 more minutes but that took years. We wrote for one-and-a-half years and we got a feature film," he explained.

The film, which has been produced by Jayakumar and Mohan, will feature Michael Thangadurai in a pivotal role. The much-awaited thriller is to release on the OTT platform Netflix on December 5.

In a world where reality is often stranger than fiction, the makers say 'Stephen' will dare to question everything one thinks one knows about guilt and innocence.

'Stephen' will be a tense, character-driven thriller exploring guilt, morality, and the blurred lines between right and wrong.

/IANS