After completing Nayak: The Real Hero in 2001, Shankar announced a project with Kamal Haasan and Preity Zinta titled Robo, to be produced by the now-defunct production company Media Dreams. Despite, announcing the project, due to a lack of backing the project was cancelled and Shankar began work on Boys. In 2005, Shankar made another project, Anniyan, this was mistaken to be the renamed title for Robot.

After a positive response from his previous project, Sivaji, there were speculations regarding Shankar's next film. However Shankar stated that he was going to be involved with his production house, S Pictures for 3 months. Several websites claimed that he was set to take his maiden Telugu language film with Chiranjeevi, while others claimed that it was set to be with Mahesh Babu.