OM: Chapter One Trailer, Cast & Release Date

Some trailers arrive quietly. The OM: Chapter One trailer did not. After a launch delayed by hours, the nearly three-minute trailer landed close to midnight on Friday, 13 November 2026 — and by Saturday morning it was sitting at No. 1 on India’s trending charts.

There is good reason for the noise. OM: Chapter One — full title O.M: Chapter 1, Udhiram: The Blood Wood, also billed as O.M – Operation Mole — brings together Dhanush and Mammootty on screen for the first time, with Sai Pallavi leading a secret police operation at the heart of the story. Directed by Rajkumar Periasamy, the filmmaker behind Amaran, the film opens in cinemas worldwide on 20 November 2026.

OM: Chapter One Trailer Is Out — And It Is Trending at No. 1

The trailer was originally scheduled to release at 7 PM on Friday, 13 November, but the launch event ran hours late. Wunderbar Films eventually shared it on X with an apology for the delay and the line “it’s now time to unleash the mayhem” — and the response suggests the wait was worth it. Within hours it had climbed to the top of India’s trending charts, with #OMTrailer leading the conversation.

Early responses have praised the scale of the film, the forest setting and above all the casting. The Telegraph summed up the mood by describing the film as “Dhurandhar meets Pushpa” — the undercover espionage of one and the red sandalwood smuggling world of the other.

Watch the OM Trailer

The official OM Chapter One trailer runs for just over three minutes (3 minutes 3 seconds) and is available on YouTube via Divo Music. You can watch it here: O.M – Trailer | Dhanush | Mammootty | Sai Pallavi | Sreeleela | Rajkumar Periasamy.

The trailer opens with the words “Some of these things actually happened” on screen as the Suprabhatam, the morning prayer, plays in the background. Before a single gun is fired, the film tells you the world you are about to enter is rooted in something real.

What the Trailer Reveals: The Story So Far

At its centre, OM: Chapter One is a story about the illegal trade in red sandalwood, also known as red sanders, a rare wood found mostly in the Seshachalam hills of Andhra Pradesh. The film is set in the Seshachalam forest region, between two temple towns, where smuggling has grown into a serious criminal business, run by a network the police treat as an organised crime empire.

The trailer sets up a joint operation. On one side, the Andhra Pradesh police form a Special Task Force to track the smugglers down, led by IPS officer Nithya Reddy. On the other, Tamil Nadu fields its own specialised team — the Organised Crime Intelligence Unit — which sends an officer deep undercover into the syndicate. Both sides are circling the same target: a shadowy figure who appears to control the trade from behind the scenes.

It is a cat-and-mouse crime drama in which the hunter has to live as one of the hunted. The trailer shows Dhanush’s character working alongside the smugglers in the forests — and several sequences hint that his cover may not hold.

Dhanush as D-402: The Officer Hiding as a Woodcutter

The trailer’s biggest surprise is what it reveals about Dhanush himself. Audiences had been led to expect him as a woodcutter pulled into the smuggling syndicate. The trailer shows that is only half the story: Dhanush plays D-402, a member of Tamil Nadu police’s Organised Crime Intelligence Unit, who goes undercover as a woodcutter to infiltrate the red sandalwood network from the inside.

It is a double life in the truest sense. D-402 has a wife and a young child, and nobody in the outside world knows about them — not even, the trailer suggests, the people he works beside in the forest. That hidden family is the emotional core of the character.

The film is also a milestone for Dhanush: announced in November 2024 as his 55th film as a lead actor, he is producing it too under his Wunderbar Films banner.

Sai Pallavi as IPS Nithya Reddy and Operation Mole

If Dhanush is the film’s undercover weapon, Sai Pallavi is the officer running the mission. She plays IPS officer Nithya Reddy, who heads Andhra Pradesh’s Exclusive Special Task Force and leads the secret mission codenamed Operation Mole — the operation that gives the film its abbreviated title, O.M.

The trailer presents Nithya Reddy as the strategist of the story: calm, sharp and in command, running an investigation into the illegal red sandalwood business while coordinating a plan to place a mole inside the network. The trailer gives her several of its most striking moments.

The role reunites Sai Pallavi with director Rajkumar Periasamy after Amaran, where she played the female lead opposite Sivakarthikeyan. Nithya Reddy is not a supporting presence but one of the story’s three central pillars, with her own operation, her own team, and her own stake in bringing the network down.

Mammootty as Siya: The Man in the Shadows

Then there is Mammootty — and the trailer saves its biggest reveal for him. He plays Siya, also referred to as Burma Karthikeyan, a grey-shaded politician and businessman who appears to control the red sandalwood trade from the shadows. (Some reports call him “Red Hills Karthikeyan”.) Where Dhanush and Sai Pallavi are the hunters, Mammootty is the man they are hunting — an international smuggler at the top of a network that stretches across state lines.

The trailer shows him in a commanding, unhurried avatar: a man who does not need to raise his voice because the entire trade answers to him. This is Mammootty’s first on-screen collaboration with Dhanush, and his return to Tamil cinema after seven years. Director Rajkumar Periasamy has said Mammootty spent two and a half days listening to the full script in Kochi before shooting, going through the first half, the second half and his own scenes in detail.

The Supporting Cast: Sreeleela, Naseeruddin Shah and Indrans

Beyond the central trio, the trailer confirms a strong supporting cast. Sreeleela plays Roja, Dhanush’s wife — the woman at the heart of the double life D-402 is leading, and the person whose safety gives his mission its emotional stakes. She is the reason the undercover officer has something to lose.

Naseeruddin Shah also appears in the trailer in a key role, though the makers have kept the details of his character under wraps. His glimpse in the trailer adds a veteran presence to an already heavyweight cast. Indrans, the acclaimed Malayalam actor, rounds out the ensemble in a prominent role.

The Team Behind the Film

OM: Chapter One is written and directed by Rajkumar Periasamy, whose previous film Amaran (2024) became one of the biggest Tamil hits of its year and won him the National Film Award for Best Director. The OM Chapter One trailer suggests he is aiming for the same balance of large-scale action and deep emotion here.

The film is produced by Dhanush, Shraddha Agrawal and Azmat Jagmag under the banners of Wunderbar Films and RTake Studios. The music is by Sai Abhyankkar, with cinematography by Ezhil Arasu K and editing by R Kalaivanan. The project is planned as the first instalment of a two-part franchise — though Periasamy has clarified that Chapter 1 is a complete story in itself.

The Real Story Behind the Fiction

One line in the trailer has drawn particular attention: “Some of these things actually happened.” It is not just a tagline. Periasamy has said in an interview with Galatta Plus that the emotional foundation of the film was partly inspired by a real-life incident from 2014 — a 30-second video of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl at a ceremony, an image that stayed with him for more than a decade.

The wider world of the film is drawn from real incidents too. Trailer coverage notes that the story draws inspiration from real events involving woodcutters in the Tiruvannamalai forest region, and the film’s backdrop — the smuggling of red sanders out of the Seshachalam hills — is a real and long-running crime. Its illegal trade has long drawn in labourers from poor communities in northern Tamil Nadu, many of whom end up doing dangerous work deep in the forests.

Release Date, Languages, OTT and the Date Change

OM: Chapter One releases in cinemas worldwide on Friday, 20 November 2026 — exactly one week after the trailer. The film arrives in Tamil, with dubbed versions in Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada, making it a genuinely pan-Indian release. Because the release is worldwide on the same day, audiences in the US, UK, Canada and Australia will be able to watch it in cinemas on 20 November as well.

Sithara Entertainments is presenting the Telugu version, with Mythri handling the Nizam territory, while Binu George Alexander Productions is behind the grand Kerala release. Trade reports say PEN Marudhar has picked up the North India theatrical rights. As for streaming, reports say Netflix has secured the film’s digital rights — but no streaming premiere date has been announced, and the film will complete its theatrical run first. For another big trailer launch this month, read our Maatrubhumi trailer coverage; for recent Tamil hits on streaming, see our Ranabaali on Netflix report.

The 20 November date is not the film’s first. OM: Chapter One was originally scheduled for 16 October 2026, but Dhanush announced a postponement in September, explaining that the team did not want to clash with Rajinikanth’s Jailer 2, arriving a day earlier on 15 October. The makers also wanted to step away from a crowded Diwali window that included Suriya’s Scene. The new date gives the film a clear run — a solo opening weekend for one of the biggest Tamil releases of the year. Read our Jailer 2 OTT release date coverage for where that film landed after cinemas.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is OM: Chapter One releasing?
OM: Chapter One releases in cinemas worldwide on Friday, 20 November 2026, in Tamil with dubbed Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada versions.

Where can I watch the OM: Chapter One trailer?
The official trailer is on YouTube via Divo Music. It runs for 3 minutes 3 seconds and was released on 13 November 2026, after a launch delayed by several hours from its scheduled 7 PM slot.

Who plays whom in OM: Chapter One?
Dhanush plays D-402, a Tamil Nadu Organised Crime Intelligence Unit officer undercover as a woodcutter; Sai Pallavi plays IPS officer Nithya Reddy, who leads Operation Mole; Mammootty plays Siya, also known as Burma Karthikeyan, the shadowy mastermind; Sreeleela plays Roja, Dhanush’s wife; and Naseeruddin Shah appears in a key role.

Is OM: Chapter One based on a true story?
Partly. Director Rajkumar Periasamy has said the film’s emotional core was inspired by a real-life incident from 2014, and the story draws on real incidents in the Tiruvannamalai and Seshachalam regions. The trailer opens with the words “Some of these things actually happened.”

When will OM: Chapter One release on OTT?
No streaming date has been announced. Reports say Netflix has secured the digital streaming rights, but the film will first complete its theatrical run after its 20 November 2026 cinema release.