As the movie completes 2 decades of its release, we give you some interesting trivia on its making...

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20 Years of Friends: A nostalgic look-back at the much-loved comedy drama which has Vijay, Suriya, Vadivelu in fine form

Team CE

Updated:2nd Jan, 2021 at 1:24 PM

After their teaming in Nerukku Ner, Vijay and Suriya came together again in Friends, after 3 years.

Friends was a remake of a successful Malayalam film of the same name that was produced by actress Saritha, and had her husband Mukesh co-starring with Jayaram.

Siddique, who directed the original, directed the Tamil version too.

Ramesh Khanna was selected to play the role which was enacted by Sreenivasan in the original. It was perhaps the biggest role of his career.

First Jyothika was roped in, along with Suvalakshmi, to play the female leads in the film.

Friends was supposed to be Jyothika's first film with Vijay, she was soon replaced by Simran for unknown reasons. Jyo and Vijay later came together for Kushi the same year.

Both Simran and Suvalakshmi also then too backed out due to date problems and were replaced by Devayani and a debutant Vijayalakshmi from Mysore.

This old photoshoot of the film became viral many years later.

Shooting was held in a fast pace on location in Ooty, Pollachi, Pazhani and Udumalaipettai.

The song 'Thendral Varum Vazhiye' was shot in New Zealand, etc.

The film featured music composed by Ilaiyaraaja received positive response and topped the charts. All lyrics of the songs were penned by Palani Bharathi

The song 'Rukku Rukku Roopuja', sung by Yuvan and Vijay Yesudas, Sowmya Raoh, became one of the film's biggest attractions.

Friends was released on Pongal day, 2001, along with Ajith's Dheena and Sathyaraj's Looty, and became a superhit.

Friends completed a 175-day theatrical run in many screens in Tamil Nadu.

The film's comedy track involving Vadivelu, Charlier, in addition to the film's leads, is considered to be one of the best of the decade.

After 16 years of its release, in May 2019, Vadivelu's role as a building contractor in the movie -Nesamani - was trending all over the world on twitter.

The hashtags #PrayForNesamani and #Vadivelu4Life were trending at the top 2 positions in India nonstop for a week.

The first tag even beat #ModiSarkar2, which was previously the nationally top trending hashtag, which referred to the recent 2019 Indian general election and the 23rd Ministry of the Republic of India

In the midst of one of Nesamani's angry outbursts, Krishnamoorthy accidentally drops a hammer from above which lands on Nesamani's head, which became the content for many memes.

Here are a few more nostalgic snapshots and rare poster, paper ads of the film and its making...

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