In 2019, Vijay Deverakonda was roped in for a love story by Mythri Movie Makers. The rom-com was launched with Kollywood's Anand Annamalai as the director and Malavika Mohanan as the heroine. The project was shelved before it began its production.
The decision to abandon the project was Vijay's. He apparently postponed it because he was inclined to do an action movie after Puri Jagannadh approached him. That idea eventually came to be known as Liger, in which Vijay played a stammering MMA fighter.
It was on August 12, 2019 that producer Charmme Kaur officially announced that Puri Jagannadh and Vijay would be teaming up for the first time. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Liger got delayed and released only in 2022. Had the film's timeline been as per the initial plan, it would have been released in 2021 itself. The pandemic made the romantic drama/comedy genre lose its edge. Action movies took over. No wonder, then, that Vijay has acted in Kingdom and is doing two more actioners currently.
