Rashmika Mandanna will play MS Subbulakshmi. The producers confirmed it on Monday, a day before the biopic's official launch at the Music Academy in Chennai, timed to the Carnatic legend's 110th birth anniversary on September 16.

Gowtam Tinnanuri, who directed Jersey and Kingdom, is at the helm. Anirudh Ravichander has been brought on to compose the songs and score, which is its own headline given how rarely his name sits next to a period biography of this scale. The film is bankrolled by Allu Aravind, Rockline Venkatesh and Bunny Vasu, running the production through their respective banners, Geetha Arts, Rockline Entertainment and Bunny Vas Works.

Kamal Haasan will attend the launch as chief guest, and the event is set to include a live performance of Subbulakshmi's compositions by The Indian Choral Ensemble. No cast beyond Rashmika has been announced yet, and the makers haven't said who plays the other key figures in Subbulakshmi's life.

A press note from the production described the run-up to this launch as a long haul, calling it a project built over years of chasing rights, permissions and family sign-off, the kind of clearances a biography like this can't skip. That tracks. Subbulakshmi isn't just a singer with a fan following, she's a Bharat Ratna recipient, and any dramatisation of her life needs the estate and institutions around her legacy on board before a camera rolls.

For readers who need the refresher: born in Madurai in 1916 to a family of musicians, her mother played the veena and her grandmother the violin, MS Subbulakshmi gave her first public performance at 11, in 1927, at the Rockfort Temple in Tiruchirappalli. She trained under Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer in Carnatic music and later studied Hindustani classical under Pandit Narayanrao Vyas. She also acted in a handful of films through the 1930s and '40s, including Sevasadanam and the title role in Meera. She died in December 2004, aged 88.

For Rashmika, this lands in the middle of an already stacked calendar. She's paired with Vijay Deverakonda in the period action drama Ranabaali, due October 16, and she headlines Rawindra Pulle's Mysaa in late November. She's also been linked to Allu Arjun and Deepika Padukone's Raaka, though that one's still unconfirmed.

A biopic on a Bharat Ratna singer is not a casual swing, and casting alone won't answer the real question hanging over this project: how you build a two-hour film around a voice that most of the country already knows by ear. Tomorrow's launch event should tell us a bit more, starting with who else is in the frame and when this actually starts shooting.