Two filmmakers who were among those who made a beeline to produce biopics on a central character of the 1921 Mappila Rebellion in Kerala have dropped out.

Variyamkunnath Kunjahamed Haji who led the 1921 revolt, originally against the British, has been a polarising character in Kerala with the Sangh parivar arguing that his was an anti-Hindu pogrom and not freedom struggle.

After filmmaker Ashiq Abu and actor Prithviraj, who was supposed to play Haji, backed out of their film on Wednesday, Omar Lulu dropped his project on Friday, just a day after announcing the biopic with action hero Babu Antony in the title role.

When Abu first announced a biopic starring Prithviraj in July last year, hate messages flooded their social media pages, including open threats from Right-wing leaders.

The outcry that Abu’s project triggered had led to four other filmmakers announcing separate films on Haji and the 1921 rebellion, one of them being RSS co-traveller Ali Akbar. While all were projected as big budget movies, none could take off due to the pandemic.

Lulu told The Telegraph on Saturday that he decided to drop his project after watching the 1988 film 1921 which was roughly based on the Mappila Rebellion through the eyes of a fictional character played by Mammootty. Haji was only a supporting character in that movie.

“When I watched 1921 for a second time after 10 years, I realised that it had already narrated the story of Variyamkunnath Haji. So there is no point in making another big budget film on the same subject since 1921 is a very good benchmark,” he said.

He admitted receiving many messages supporting and opposing his proposed project. “No one threatened me or my film. But I did receive a lot of messages from pro-Sangh parivar people who were against the film and many others who encouraged me to go ahead,” he said.

Lulu had even received several offers from producers shortly after his announcement on making the biopic on Haji if someone were to pump in Rs 15 crore. While Dubai-based entrepreneur Iqbal Marconi offered to meet the entire expense, several others offered to jointly finance the movie.

“My idea was to cast Babu (an actor trained in martial arts) in the title role and bring in experts to do action sequences to add value to the story of Haji. But now there’s no point in discussing that since I have dropped the plan,” he added.

While neither Abu nor Prithviraj had explained the reason for backing out of the project, there was speculation that they had serious differences with producers Compass Movies.

Compass Movies, in a statement on Friday, announced that the project was not shelved even after the exit of Abu and Prithviraj. It announced that the film would be made in two parts by a new team to be announced soon.

Veteran filmmaker P.T. Kunju Muhammed had clarified that he would go ahead with his film soon after Abu’s decision shocked the Malayalam film industry. But there was no word from Ibrahim Vengara and Shahbaz Pandikkad, who too had announced their own films. Akbar did not respond to calls from this newspaper.

Often described as a part of the Khilafat Movement, the Mappila Rebellion had led to heavy bloodshed with an estimated 10,000 people, nearly 2,400 of them rebels, getting killed. Haji and his compatriot Ali Musaliar who led the fight were executed after summary trials.

The Indian Council of Historical Research had recently kicked up a row by deleting 387 names of Mappila rebels, including Haji and Musaliar, from the Dictionary of Martyrs of India’s Freedom Struggle that contains accounts of martyrs from the First War of Independence in 1857 to the Independence in 1947.