Vijay was roped in for the lead role to portray a villager.[9] Genelia D'Souza, who had paired up with Vijay in the 2005 romantic flick Sachein was chosen for the role of a journalist in the film,[10] and Hansika Motwani was chosen to portray Vijay's love interest,[11][12] while Saranya Mohan would play the sister to Vijay's character.[13] Hollywood stunt director Tom Delmar joined the crew for choreographing the stunts in the film.[14] Vijay even walked out of Shankar's Nanban reasoning that the two films demanded two completely different looks and he couldn't afford to lose his commitment towards his films.[15] However, he joined in the shooting of the film later as the scenes starring the main hero were reserved to be shot in a later schedule.[16] Santhanam and M. S. Baskar were chosen to play the comedy lead in the film.[17] Vijay donated 100 cows to poor people in Udumalapet near Coimbatore as per Hindu Tradition to pray for the success of the film.[18]The film has been widely reported to be a remake of the 2000 Telugu film Azad that starred late Soundarya as a journalist and Akkineni Nagarjuna as a villager, incidentally the roles essayed by Genelia D'Souza and Vijay, respectively.[19][20] Director M. Raja, however, who so far has been making remakes only, claims that it's not a remake, but his own story.
