Director AR Murugadoss, who met the press today ahead of Darbar's release, revealed that he initially had plans of making a spin-off based on Rajinikanth's 2005 film, Chandramukhi, before pitching Darbar's script to the Superstar.

Answering Cinema Express' question about the origins of Darbar, Murugadoss said, "I initially told Rajini sir the idea of a spin-off film, based on his characters in Chandramukhi — Dr Saravanan and Vettaiyan. That film was set in a different universe with stories of these two iconic characters running in parallel. Superstar was every excited about the logline, and asked me to work on it."

The filmmaker added that practical difficulties made him shelve the idea of that spin-off, and come up with Darbar's script instead. "A week after I pitched the story to him, I realised the difficulties of getting the rights from Sivaji Productions and P Vasu sir. Though convincing them and getting a clearance might seem feasible, I felt it would create acrimony amongst everyone concerned. So I shelved the idea and instead came up with Darbar."

Darbar, co-starring Nayanthara, Sunil Shetty, and Nivetha Thomas, hits the screens on January 9. The cop thriller has music by Anirudh Ravichander and cinematography by Santhosh Sivan.