Looks like director VA Shrikumar has plans to turn his upcoming film Mahabharata into a franchise. The director is gearing up to direct the film which is based on the novel Randamoozham and penned by MT Vasudevan Nair. The project touted to be made on a budget of Rs. 1000 crores, will be the costliest film to be ever made in the history of Indian cinema. Speaking about the film, VA Shrikumar has been quoted by the Times of India as saying, “Plans are in place to develop the movie into a franchise.
The film has scope for a lot of stories even though it is told from Bhima's perspective. We have a lot of superheroes including Arjuna and Krishna, who have not been celebrated enough. The basic idea is to repackage the characters to make it relevant to the times so that even the youth can relate to them.” When asked how he intends to create a franchise out of it, the director had said, “The character of Ashwatthama is so fascinating that it warrants a film, and characters of Krishna, Arjuna and Bhima can also appear as part of a movie centered on Ashwatthama.”
The director has said that the film will be released not only in Malayalam but plans are on to release it in English, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and Kannada as well. While there were some objections over using the title Mahabharata for the project, the director had clarified that there would be no title change.
On starring in the film, Mohanlal wrote in his blog earlier, “Like most children in India, I too grew up listening to the tales of Mahabharata and Ramayana. For most people, Bheema was a loyal brother with a huge body and a large appetite. It was after reading MT Vasudevan Nair’s novel Randamoozham, I understood the emotional side to Bheema. MT sir was the one who suggested my name for Bheema’s role and I’m thankful to him as an actor for that. But, I’m overwhelmed when I think of it now. Bheema has been part of my life for a long time now. I had become Bheema in 1985 film Rangam."
(Content provided by Digital Native)