Mallika Prasad aka ‘Amma’, the first female villain in the hit Mardaani franchise, has become a huge talking point of Mardaani 3, given her magnetic, bone-chilling on-screen impact! The acclaimed actor reveals how Yash Raj Films built the strategy to keep her under wraps pre-release for her character to have maximum impact on screen for the audience! Mallika says, “There's always a lot of joy in the movies whenever there is a big reveal or there is a surprise. The Mardani franchise has excelled at creating great villains, so with the character of Amma this was the plan - to keep things under wraps until the timing was right for the surprise reveal of the first female villain of the franchise.”
YRF’s thought was that if Mallika is put forward in pre-release promotions, people will get to see more of her. They wanted to protect Mallika and Amma’s aura for the big screen and then unleash her to media during post-release promotions when people swoon on her, given her acting brilliance. Mallika says, “We can see the result with all the amazing fan feedback on the trailer and the tremendous response to the film. All the love and congratulations I've got from fans on my social media for my performance seems to suggest that the character of Amma ‘hits different’ - with creepy supervillain vibes.”
She adds. “The score by John Stewart Eduri and the songs by Sarthak Kalyani give the character that extra something - as the character of Amma's ‘evil boss music’ adds to her menace. Indian cinema has some memorable villains, and I've enjoyed essaying this role which speaks to the times - crime and villainy are produced within the system itself, when people are denied justice and exploitation is normalised.” Rani Mukerji’s Mardaani 3 is on track to become a hit film and the franchise is set to score a hattrick of hits with its strong collections and unanimously positive reviews and word out mouth. Directed by Abhiraj Minawala and produced by Aditya Chopra, Mardaani 3 carries forward the franchise’s legacy of hard-hitting, socially relevant storytelling.
With this brilliant result, the Mardaani series remains India’s only successful female-led franchise and the only hit female-cop film franchise in the history of our cinema. The release of Mardaani 3 is also especially meaningful as it coincides with Rani Mukerji completing 30 years in cinema