I read in 'Katradhum Petradhum' that Maniratnam had a script ready for filming Ponniyin Selvan and asked Sujatha to get the dialogues ready. But down the line they called the whole thing off. Though the reason is reasonable, its not fair that they dropped the project. Maniratnam's thoughts on dropping the project goes something like this - people from three decades have been reading the novel and each will have their own idea of how Nandhini, Ponniyin Selvan and Vandhiyadevan would look; so even with the best cast, he would not be able to satisfy the public; and public opinion would be 'novella irukka madhiri padam illa'. Fair enough. But we don't have even one movie made on the novel. We know Maniratnam will not give us crap to look at, he could have at least given us a chance to know what he thought about the novel and who he thought as the best cast for the characters. It would have been very interesting to see the movie from his point.