Aakash Baskaran recently made his directorial debut with Atharvaa's romantic entertainer Idhayam Murali after years of being behind the camera, beginning as an assistant director and rising up in the ranks to become a noted producer with the banner Dawn Pictures. Among his recent productions were Dhanush's Idli Kadai and Sudha Kongara's Parasakthi. The latter, which was a period drama that released amid high expectations, unfortunately failed to resonate with audiences and underperformed at the box office. In a recent interview with Chitra Lakshmanan, the director-producer opened up on the reasons behind its failed box office performance despite having a high-profile cast featuring Sivakarthikeyan, Ravi Mohan, Sreeleela and Atharvaa.

Aakash cited the primary factor as the heavy controversies surrounding the movie leading up to its release. He then explained that the heavy political subject matter, centering around the 1960s anti-Hindi imposition protests, led to significant censor delays prior to release.

For the unversed, Parasakthi's release was moved up to January 10, from January 14, sparking debates and discussions on social media. Many concluded that Parasakthi wanted to compete with the Vijay-starrer Jana Nayagan, which was set to release on January 9, leading to reactions of anger, disappointment and abuse from users. At that time, Aakash called it an "unnecessary controversy" and said, "20 years back, there were 10 films that were releasing on Pongal. 10 became five, five became three, and then it became two. So, two films releasing on the same day is fair. I don't look at it with contention, I just look at it in a healthy manner."

"It could be anyone of the reasons: High expectations not being fulfilled, controversies, censor issues and even box office clash. We can't call Parasakthi a failure. It is a good film. I have done both Parasakthi and Idli Kadai in profit sharing mode. For Parasakthi we didn't able to honour the profit sharing, compared to its high scale budget. For Idli Kadai, we have given Dhanush sir what we had promised, as it was relatively less in budget and it was a profitable venture for us," he added.

Parasakthi followed the story of Chezhiyan (Sivakarthikeyan), and his part in the anti-Hindi agitations of 1960's Tamil Nadu. Upon release, Parasakthi was met with mixed reviews from fans and critics. While it earned over Rs 12 crore on its first day, the film's revenue dwindled down in the second and third weeks. It crossed over Rs 100 crore globally in its box office run.

Parasakthi's extended cast includes Kulappulli Leela, Prakash Belawadi, Dev Ramnath, Prithvi Rajan, Guru Somasundaram and Chetan, with cameo appearances from Rana Daggubati and Basil Joseph.

Sudha had written the film along with Arjun Nadesan, with an additional screenplay by Ganeshaa and dialogues by Madhan Karky and Shan Karuppusamy. The crew of the film included GV Prakash as the music composer who had marked his 100th film as a music director, Ravi K Chandran as the cinematographer and Sathish Surya as the editor. Dev Ramnath served as the creative producer, along with MP Senthel and Rhea Kongara, who were the executive producers.