Ghilli is the Tamil remake of the Telugu superhit Okkadu which had Mahesh Babu and Bhoomika Chawla in the lead roles. Apart from the Tamil remake, the movie was remade in 4 other regional languages.
In 2006, Okkadu was remade in Kannada as Ajay and in Bengali as Jor (2008). The Hindi remake is titled Tevar, which features Arjun Kapoor and Sonakshi Sinha in lead roles.Ghilli brought together Vijay and Trisha for the first time. Their onscreen chemistry opened to immense love from audience and critics alike. They later appeared together in Tiruppachi, Kuruvi & AadhiAccording to the trade, Ghilli is the first Tamil movie to cross the coveted Rs 40 crore at the Tamil Nadu Box Office.For nearly 5 years, Rajinikanth’s Padayappa was the benchmark in terms of box-office numbers. Ghilli, in 2004, became the first Tamil movie to surpass the Superstar’s record in Tamil cinema.'Kabadi Kabadi’ song from the movie was played at the Asian games Kabbadi finals in 2010.Reportedly, Ghilli is the first Vijay film to have grossed over Rs 50 crore worldwide.Ghilli set the record for becoming the highest grossing non-Malayalam film in Kerala in the year 2004. Reportedly, the movie performed much better than mainstream Malayalam movies in the state.Ghilli reportedly broke the record of MGR’s Adimaipen for the number of people seeing the movie in the first week of its release.The movie grossed nearly $500,000 in the Malaysian market and became the first non-Rajini/Kamal film to achieve the remarkable feat.Ghilli celebrated a 100-day run in 45 theaters in Tamil Nadu and even went on to complete 300 days run in Tamil Nadu.Kalavani fame actor Vimal played a small role as one of Vijay's friends in Ghilli.Chiyaan Vikram’s real-life father, Vinod Raj, played Trisha’s father in the film.Vijay had performed some risky stunt sequences, like a jeep hitting another vehicle, without a stunt double.Trisha also, reportedly, jumped out from the lighthouse on to an umbrella on her own, without using a stunt double.Prakashraj's stylish pronunciation of 'Chellam' went on to become pop culture of the mid-2000s.Here are a few memorable stills from the film...