Pongal 2026: What’s Cooking In Kollywood?

Much like how the Sankranthi season is financially very lucrative and a closely contested for one in Telugu cinema, the Pongal(Tamil Sankranthi) season is an equally important one for Tamil cinema.

Considering the fact that the family audience come to the theatres in big numbers during the festival season, many Tamil films prepare for release during the first and second week of January period. The same is going to be the case this time as we have two big Tamil films in the lineup. 

One is Jana Nayagan featuring Thalapathy Vijay and the other is Parasakthi featuring Sivakarthikeyan. While the Vijay film is already announced for lease on Jan 9, the Sivakarthikeyan film, which was earlier announced for Jan 14 release is now reportedly preparing for Jan 10, in close proximity to Jana Nayagan. 

Reportedly, according to certain Vijay’s fans on social media, there is an external reason behind this change of date as the producer of Parashakthi has certain political affiliations and wants to place this film close to the Vijay film to hit on its prospects. This is an attempt to dent the farewell film for Vijay at the box office to whatever degree possible. 

On paper, the Vijay film might look superior, but Sivakarthikeyan can’t be underestimated, and more importantly, the Parashakthi film has cultural roots to anti Hindi movement which is a strong sentiment in Tamil Nadu. This could be the reason why the producer is putting it against Vijay, say a few Tamil folk on social media. 

It must also be noted that Jana Nayagan is a farewell film for Thalapathy before his political endeavor and coming up against this would largely affect Parashakthi as well.