Jithu Madhavan – The director of Romancham and Aavesham fame

Jithu Madhavan is a Malayalam filmmaker and screenwriter, who is best known for his works, Romancham (2023) and Aavesham (2024). He scripted both movies as well. Both these films were huge hits. Now he is working on the sequel of his debut work, Romancham. His movie Aavesham starring Fahadh Fasil was a Pan Indian hit once it got released on OTT, and the characters – Ranga and Amban became immensely popular.

Jithu Madhavan – An aeronautical engineer by profession

He completed aeronautical engineering from Bangalore. Cinema had always been his dream, and he started dreaming about films during engineering days. After studies, he worked in a firm in Bangalore for 4 years before joining film industry.

Jithu started his film journey as an assistant director in 2015. ‘Utopiayille Rajavu’ was his first work as an assistant director. He later assisted John Paul in Guppy, who later turned his producer for  Romancham.

The hitmaker of entertaining films with fresh themes

Jithu Madhavan made his entry in M-Town with 2023 horror comedy release ‘Romancham‘. He turned a real life experience from his Bangalore days into his debut movie. Written and directed by Madhavan himself, the film featured Soubin Shahir, Arjun Ashokan, Sajin Gopu, Siju Sunny and Abin Bino in the lead roles. Made on a budget less than 3 crores, the movie collected 70 crore from box office, thus becoming one of the smash hits of the year.

Next year, he directed Aavesham starring Fahadh Fasil, Sajin Gopu and Social media influencers Hipzster, Mithun Jai Shankar and Roshan Shanavas. The movie made on a budget of 30 crore collected 156 crore from theatres in just one month before OTT release, and became the biggest hit of Fahadh’s career, in a lead role. The movie received love from across the country and was listed among the top movies of the year by different reviewers.

He tied the knot with his lady love Shifina Babin Pakker in 2023, who has worked with him as an assistant.

Jithu Madhavan – Some interesting and less-known facts

1. Both his releases, Romancham and Aavesham had no female lead and had only less significant female characters.

2. His first two films, Romancham and Aavesham were comedy flicks and blockbusters at box office.

3. Romancham was based on a real-life incident happened in the life of Jithu and his 6 bachelor friends during their college days in Bangalore. It happened in Marthahalli, where he stayed with his friends during 2005 – 2009.

4. He has worked as an assistant director for 2016 acclaimed film, Guppy.

5. Filmmakers bought the copyrights of the song, Karimkali, which was later used as reels in Aavesham. The reels featuring Fahadh went viral, and people started making their own reels, including celebrities belonging to different fields.

6. While he was writing the screenplay of Aavesham, Fahadh was in his mind. It made writing easy for him. He made Fahadh speak Kannada-Malayalam, which worked well for the film.

7. The idea of Aavesham came to his mind, while he was doing his first film.