With his last few films not doing well at the box office and distributors and theatre owners asking him to compensate their losses, Ilayathalapathy Vijay was clearly going through a bad phase.

But the launch of his ambitious Tamil project Velayudham a few weeks ago seems to have changed all that.

Aascar Ravichandran, the producer of the film, is known for such grand launches; the audio launch of Kamal Haasan's Dasavatharam with Jackie Chan as the chief guest, is an example.

For the Velayudham launch, Aascar decided to invite 60,000 fans of Vijay.

Rumours of Vijay joining a political party were doing the rounds when the actor met with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. But Vijay denied it.

Then there were stories of him starting a party of his own. But Vijay denied that as well.

Dialogues in his recent films, however, give us the impression that him joining politics is inevitable.

Velayudham is directed by M Raja (Jeyam Raja), who is famous for remaking successful Telugu films with his brother Jeyam Ravi as the hero.

Raja has not tasted failure in his career so far.

Genelia joins the film as Vijay's heroine. This is her second film with him after Sachein.

The other heroine of the film is Hansika Motwani, who Vijay thinks resembles a younger Khushboo.

Camerawork is done by Priyan, art direction by Milan and music is by Vijay Antony.