A young guy walks into Mollywood with one dream.
Become the youngest, most celebrated director in Malayalam cinema.
Genre of choice? Horror.
The industry has other plans. 😅
That's the heartbeat of Mollywood Times — and now it's coming straight to your couch.
Naslen's coming-of-age drama lands on JioHotstar from July 3, 2026.
The makers dropped the announcement with a line that pretty much sums up the whole film:
"A love-hate letter to Malayalam cinema."
Directed by Abhinav Sunder Nayak — the same mind behind the cult favourite Mukundan Unni Associates.
It hit screens on June 5. And the box office story is… interesting.
Kerala carried it. Word-of-mouth carried it harder.
Vineeth Madhavan — Naslen's character — isn't your typical wide-eyed dreamer.
He's stubborn. Principled. Allergic to compromise.
And Mollywood, in all its quirky, gatekeepy glory, throws everything at him.
The film doesn't go bleak. It stays upbeat. The hero never quits.
That's the refreshing part. ✨
Critics loved the honesty.
ETimes called the writing "refreshingly real"… but flagged a muddled second half and some tone-deaf bits around SC/ST privilege.
IMDb fans went harder — calling it Naslen's career-best, "bitter, hilarious, completely unapologetic."
It's the kind of film theatre crowds argue about on the way out.
Mukundan Unni Associates didn't blow up in theatres either.
It became a cult monster on OTT.
And that's the bet here.
A film about the impossible odds of Malayalam cinema… might just find its real audience the same way its director's last one did.
July 3. JioHotstar.
The second life of Mollywood Times begins.
That's all for now!
