 Thirupathisamy had gone on to make the story into a Telugu film titled "Azad" (2000), while also began pre-production work to remake it in Tamil as "Velan" with Vijay and Priyanka Chopra in 2001, before he died later that year.Raja subsequently bought the remake rights and re-worked the script of "Azad" to suit Tamil audiences and signed on Genelia D'Souza and Hansika Motwani to play other lead roles.The film, which was retitled "Velayudham", became Raja's first Tamil venture which did not include his brother in the cast and while writing the script, Raja analysed Vijay's popularity amongst children and women audience to insert certain scenes into the script.