Avargal (previously known as Santa Maria) is an upcoming Indian Tamil film directed by Gautham Ramachandran and written by Rakshit Shetty. A remake of the Kannada film Ulidavaru Kandanthe (2014), the film stars Nivin Pauly, Natarajan Subramaniam and Shraddha Srinath in the lead roles. It began production during June 2016.
In 2012, Gautham Ramachandran met Nivin Pauly and the pair began discussing the idea of making a bilingual film. They developed several story lines but then chose to purchase the remake of rights of Rakshit Shetty's Kannada film Ulidavaru Kandanthe (2014), after being impressed with script.
Gautham began working on the script during June 2015 and revealed that nearly 40 drafts were made as he changed the screenplay of the original to fit in with the Tamil milieu. Nivin Pauly had also worked closely with Gautham on scripting the Tamil version, with the pair dropping their initial plans of making it a bilingual venture in Malayalam too. In April 2015, Gautham denied that Varalaxmi Sarathkumar had been signed on as the lead actress.