After 'Avihitham', Senna Hegde to venture into Kasaragod underbelly with 'Blood-y', his biggest yet
After tackling adultery and Malayali men's hypocrisy in the hilarious Avihitham, out now in theatres, filmmaker Senna Hegde and his producing collaborators on the film announced that their next stop is a crime saga titled Blood-y.
Hegde, who broke through with the much-celebrated Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam, had shared a poster, captioning it, "We’ve celebrated the simple, the sincere, the everyday Kanhangad heart. Now it’s time to stain it a little. This is our descent into desire, deceit, and decay. BLOOD-Y, because every paradise deserves its hell."
Speaking to THE WEEK, Hegde said the film is a "contemporary gangster drama" that has been a dream of producer CV Sarathi, of E4 Entertainments and E4 Experiments, who has been in conversation since 2015 about doing a film set in the Kasaragod underbelly. "We know a lot of incidents that has happened here, but we are going to fictionalise everything — no intention to depict a true story. Of course, we may take inspiration from facts or acts that happened here, but what we're doing is a completely fictionalised take on those events."
The project is also backed by E4 Experiments partner Mukesh Mehta in association with Harris Desom and PB Anish, and will see Hegde reteaming with cinematographer Sreeraj Raveendran, who shot all of his films, including Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam. "It's going toput me out of my comfort zone because of the sheer magnitude of the subject," says Hegde.
In terms of scale, Hedge calls it the biggest project he has attempted so far even though it's not one he would call "massive."
"You'll never see me trying to excute something to show off a skill or scale for the sake of it," he adds. "If the scene warrants something, we'll elevate it to the level we need. This film, too, will have a lot more people from Kanhangad. We may cast a few known names here and there, wherever apt. Nothing has been decided yet."
Currently in the writing process, Hegde hopes to wrap up pre-production by January or February 2026, and begin filming from April through July.
Recently, another Malayalam independent filmmaker, Krishand, directed an ambitious multi-episode gangster series called The Chronicles of the 4.5 Gang, currently streaming on SonyLIV. It featured some of the most talented names in the Malayalam independent scene, behind and front of the camera.
Entertainment