The Tamil – Hindi bilingual Mahavir Karna will go on floors this year, confirmed its director RS Vimal. The filmmaker has been busy with the prep work for this mega-budget project for quite a while now and is assembling the star cast and crew. The shooting of this magnum opus is scheduled to begin in October this year at the Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad where huge sets have been erected for the purpose.

The team also has plans to shoot important sequences in Jaipur and Canada. Initially, Prithviraj Sukumaran was in the fray to play the lead role but he opted out for various reasons and the offer went to Vikram. The actor is currently busy with the Hari directorial Saamy Square, which is the sequel to his hit movie Saamy, released in 2003.

He will be completing this film in a few months and will then begin work on Mahavir Karna. On the new addition to the crew, director RS Vimal had said that he has signed up Shameer Mohammad to edit the film and added that he and the editor would be the only two Malayalis associated with the magnum opus.

The film will be bankrolled by United Film Kingdom on a budget of Rs 300 crores. According to the director, Mahavir Karna will be released in Malayalam, Tamil, and Hindi and will be dubbed in 32 languages.

The director said that when he wanted to cast Vikram to play the role of Karna in the movie and approached him, the star was skeptical if he would be able to do it as the role was perfectly etched out by Sivaji Ganesan. However, on hearing out the entire script and how the role was carved, Vikram was so impressed that he agreed to sign up for the film.

It may be mentioned here that soon after completing the script, the Ennu Ninte Moihdeen fame director went to Sabarimala to get the blessings of lord Ayyappan. A lot of research has gone into the project and the director has rewritten the script eight times.

(Content provided by Digital Native)