In the early 1980s, Kamal Haasan wrote a story titled "Dhayam" for the journal, "Idhayam Pesugiradhu". He had discussed making the story into a film with K. Balachander during the period, but felt that the story was ahead of its time. In 2000, he picked up the story again and agreed to make the film with director Suresh Krissna, a former assistant of Balachander, and producer S. Thanu. When Thanu had agreed to produce a film for Haasan, he had initially rejected the storylines of "Pammal K. Sambandam" and "Nala Damayanthi". This prompted the pair to begin work on "Dhayam" instead, and the film was revealed to be called "Aalavandhan" in Tamil and "Abhay" in Hindi. "Abhay" was distributed by reputed Shringar Films. Mahesh Mahadevan was signed on to compose the background music, Tirru was selected to be the cinematographer and Sameer Chanda was picked to be the art director. Actor Jayam Ravi also worked on the film as an assistant director.