Director Shankar has had a record dozen hits in a row since 1993

Starting as a full-fledged director in 1993, a few days before his 30th birthday, Shanmugam Shankar, who turns 57 today, came up with his maiden venture 'Gentleman'. It was a massive hit, breathing a fresh lease of life into the career of 'Action King' Arjun, introducing Prabhu Deva on the big screen with his livewire, energetic moves and dazzling the south Indian movie market with its stylish mounting and pulsating music.

Since then, Shankar has laid a path for the amazing technological progress of Tamil cinema and consequently, Indian cinema which has been zooming on the fast lane for three decades now. He moved into the big league very soon in his 12-film career by collaborating with top star Kamal Haasan in 'Indian' in 1996. The film enabled Kamal to bag the National Award for the Best Actor.

He kept up the momentum by an interesting intermix of lavish productions, international shooting schedules, technology and music which kept hitting the bull's eye over and over. Between 1998 and 2003, his films went back to middle-rung stars and old favourite Arjun. 'Boys' released in the first few years of the new millennium was a bigger hit in Telugu than Tamil.

From 2005 till 2018, again Shankar churned out hits like ' Anniyan', ' Sivaji', 'Endhiran', 'Nanban',' I' and 2.0 with the A-listers and titanic names like Vikram, Rajinikanth and Vijay which made him one of the showman directors of Indian cinema. His last venture had Hindi hero Akshay Kumar essaying a negative role, a first for him in southern cinema.

The record of a dozen successful releases is unbroken till now in Indian cinema.