Are Tamil cinema's directors quietly becoming its next superstars?

Five years ago, nobody was asking this question, if Tamil cinema's biggest stars stopped showing up, who would replace them? When the Marquee names went quietTamil cinema's marquee names have all, in their own way, stepped back. Pradeep Ranganathan called it firstBefore Lokesh, Pradeep Ranganathan ran this experiment at a scale nobody predicted. Instead of returning to the director's chair afterward, he kept acting: ‘Dragon’ (₹150 crore), then ‘Dude’ (₹100 crore). Pradeep doesn't have a face built for a billboard, and that's the point, audiences see someone who could be a colleague or a roommate, not an untouchable star.