When Vijay made an announcement that he was retiring from acting and was going to concentrate on his political career, there was a popular opinion among the Kollywood audience that if Vijay failed to achieve the expected result in the state elections, he would return to his acting career.
However, surprisingly with the historic election results, Vijay has emerged as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and now it is almost confirmed that he is never ever going to return to his acting career.
On the other hand, while Vijay quit his acting career, actor Ajith Kumar, who was in the same league, started to concentrate more on his racing career and is only acting in a minimal number of projects.
Because Vijay and Ajith Kumar have taken a different route in their journey, the Kollywood industry has been expecting a superstar to replace these actors, especially in the market that Vijay once ruled.
Earlier, when these discussions about who is going to be the next superstar of Kollywood arose on social media, most people’s answers were either Sivakarthikeyan or Dhanush. No one even considered Suriya, as the actor did not achieve a theatrical success from 2013 to 2026.
Surprisingly, Suriya made a solid comeback with Karuppu and it collected more than 300 crores worldwide, which is almost on par with Vijay’s average box office collections.
Even when the actor proved his potential with Karuppu, many trade experts responded that just with a single film’s collection, we cannot conclude that Suriya would fill the void of Vijay’s market. They claimed that just because Karuppu was a successful venture, we cannot believe that Suriya will constantly deliver a similar kind of success.
Immediately after Karuppu, Suriya’s Vishwanath and Sons was geared up for a theatrical release, and exactly according to the trade experts’ opinion, Vishwanath and Sons faced very low pre-release hype and buzz. Consequently, some started claiming that this was the reality and Suriya could never replace Vijay.
However, once Vishwanath and Sons gained momentum at the box office after the first show, it went on a rampage in box office collections and collected more than 100 crores within just two days of its theatrical run. Suriya, with these back-to-back successes, silenced the trolls and trade experts’ negative opinions and now he seems like a potential superstar to replace Vijay in the market.
Some trade experts who had initially shared negative opinions on Suriya have now accepted the fact that the actor is currently the only star in Kollywood with a huge market in his league. They note that while Karuppu was a mass commercial entertainer and Vishwanath and Sons was a family entertainer, Suriya proved that he can pull a huge section of the audience to the theatres irrespective of the genre.
Additionally, he even fulfilled a factor that Vijay missed in his prime phase, which is constant collections in the Telugu states. Even though Vijay had huge stardom in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, he was not able to crack the Telugu market, but Suriya’s last two films performed exceptionally well in the Telugu states.
Ultimately, although Suriya fumbled for the last 13 years, he made a solid comeback right at the time when the industry was looking for a superstar. Therefore, it remains to be seen how Suriya is going to maintain the momentum he gained through the success of Karuppu and Vishwanath and Sons, and how he is going to shape his lineup further to emerge as the biggest star of South Indian cinema in the future.
