It was 1988. Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister of the country. Sachin Tendulkar had not debuted for India. Internet and mobile phones were not even known. It was the year that the Malayalam film Oru CBI Diary Kurippu released. While it was a big hit in Kerala, it actually did more business in Tamil Nadu. It ran for nearly a year there.
But nobody knew then that the tightly-woven investigative thriller story would go on to spawn sequels, and become the longest-surviving franchise film in Indian movie history --- 33 years and counting. All the five films have the Malayalam superstar Mammootty playing the now cult CBI sleuth Sethurama Iyer, and all have been directed by K Madhu and written by SN Swamy.
CBI 5: The Brain to stream on Netflix from June 12
The fifth in the series, CBI 5: The Brain, released in the theatres last month, and now it is ready to stream on OTT platform. The film will premiere on Netflix on June 12.
Dileesh Pothan, Sai Kumar, Asha Sharath, Sudev Nair, Anoop Menon, Renji Panicker, and Santhosh Keezhatoor play important roles in the movie. Veteran Mukesh, who played one of the assistant sleuths to Mammootty in the franchise before, is reprising his role. Jagathy Sreekumar also returns to big screen after he was paralysed after a road accident in 2012. He was also in the very first installment of the franchise.
The story of CBI 5: The Brain is about a series of mystery deaths that is come to be called as 'Basket Killings'. A minister dies of heart attack on a flight. This is followed by a crop of tragic deaths – an accident, a suicide, a hit-and-run incident. The CBI is called in to crack the case. The scene is set for the arrival of the adroit Sethurama Iyer and his small team of energetic and smart investigators.
Oru CBI Diary Kurippu in 1988 was followed up by a sequel titled Jagratha in 1989. The third in the series was released after almost a decade in 2004 which was titled Sethurama Iyer CBI and the fourth part was titled Nerariyan CBI that hit the theaters in 2005. So it is 17 years since the previous film in the series was made.
Mammootty's release after CBI 5: The Brain was Puzhu, which had a direct release on SonyLIV. His other release this year has been Bheeshma Parvam, an interesting mix of Mahabharatha and The Godfather.
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