During the filming of Kuruvi, which also starred Joseph Vijay and was directed by Dharani, Babu Sivan served as one of his prominent assistant directors in the film and wrote the dialogues. Sivan was later prompted to begin his maiden directorial venture with Vijay in the lead role. He was eventually chosen as the director for the next feature film to be produced AVM Productions. The project was announced in August 2008 with the title Vettaikkaaran taken from the 1964 Tamil film starring M. G. Ramachandran.

Until after the Arun-starrer Villu released in January 2009, Vettaikkaaran was formally launched the next month at the Vinayagar Temple, a privatized Hindu temple located in one of the studios of AVM Productions. The film’s director Babu Sivan, producers M. Balasubramaniam and B. Gurunath Meyyappan, Vijay and his wife, Vijay Antony, S. A. Chandrasekhar and director Dharani were present at the film’s inaugration. The film was also regarded to have a storyline similar to Vijay’s previous film Thirupaachi directed by Perarasu.

Casting
AVM Productions was on the look out for a director at first, with commercial value. Perarasu and Hari were mentioned, but later, AVM Productions chose Babu Sivan to be the director of the film.

Several actresses were approached to essay the lead female role with Tamanna Bhatia, Ileana D’Cruz, Bhavana Balachandran, Asin Thottumkal, Nayantara and Anushka Shetty being considered for the role. Afterwards, Anushka Shetty was finalized to portray the role. Vijay Antony was favoured for the Music composer position, who recently scored for the film Kadhalil Vizhunthen and received many accolades for the peppy number “Nakka Mukka,” which was regarded as one of the best songs composed in 2008. In this film, Ilaya thalapathy is also involving in Music Composing with Vijay Antony.Cinematographer Gopinath was choosen to be the lead cameraman in the film after Ravi Varman was dropped out from the film. V. T. Vijayan was also signed as the film’s editor while Milan has been signed to serve as the film’s art director.

Filming for Vettaikkaaran began on March 9, 2009 The filming took place in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh where film’s title song was choreographed and filmed with Vijay, his son and 100 junior artists. In this title song Vijay is appearing with different hair style. courtsey : wikipedia