On Tuesday, director Mari Selvaraj released the poster and making video of his upcoming film Karnan with Dhanush in the lead on the occasion of the star's birthday.

There's not much known about the film at this stage but it's likely to be a retelling of the story, set in contemporary times.

The poster shows a sword upheld by several hands, the image speaking of resistance, while the video has a silhouette of Dhanush raising the sword as the skies turn red. The video also shows the crew creating a whole new village to shoot the film.

As 'Raja Melam' by the nadaswaram and thavil instruments is playing in the background, we see glimpses of how the Karnan team worked on the set design. Starting from a miniature model, a whole village takes shape, complete with thatched roof houses, boulders and an unfinished statue of the Buddha. Livestock, dogs and birds fill the frame and then we get the bigger picture of the complete canvas.

Towards the end of the video, the sun is shown shining through the clouds as Karnan (Dhanush) raises the sword. He quickly climbs up a hill, with the sun beating down on him.

Dhanush's 'Karnan' team has created a village for the film. Director Maari Selvaraj wanted to shoot the film in a village setup resembling Tirunelveli and surrounding locales. As shooting in real locations with Dhanush would be difficult, the team recreated a village set and completed around 90% of the shoot.

Produced by Kalaipuli S Thanu, Santhosh Narayanan is composing the music for the film and the making video was unveiled on Dhanush's birthday with authentic rural beats from Tirunelveli.

Karnan also has Malayalam actress Rajisha Vijayan as the female lead, cinematographer-turned-actor Natarajan aka Natty, Malayalam actor Lal, Lakshmipriya Chandramouli, Azhagar Perumal, Gouri Kishan and Yogi Babu in pivotal characters. The film was supposed to release for Summer holidays but due to the COVID 19 pandemic and lockdown, the makers haven't finalized the release date yet.