When Ramayana was announced it was revealed that the project was conceptualized by Nitesh Tiwari, Madhu Mantena, Allu Aravind and Namit Malhotra. It was supposed to be one big project. Netizens were super excited when names of Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, Alia Bhatt, Yash, Sunny Deol floated around as possible cast for the movie. Now, it has been clarified that Ramayana has been taken over by Namit Malhotra and his firm DNEG. It seems Madhu Mantena is now out of the project. Sridhar Raghavan is going to be the writer of the epic film. As we know, the cast will start shooting soon with a 60-day schedule in London. The movie is a trilogy and the first ends with the abduction of Maa Sita. Sai Pallavi has come to Mumbai for the workshop.
Namit Malhotra is one of the biggest names in VFX globally. He is the owner of DNEG. In the past few years, they have won seven Oscars for films like Dune, Interstellar and Inception to name a few. But he is not known as a full-fledged movie producer. This news is being discussed a lot on Reddit. People feel that Ramayana needs a seasoned producer, and not a VFX expert as per social media.
On Reddit, netizens are speculating that Madhu Mantena and Namit Malhotra had a fall-out. It happened because it took Mantena a lot of time to finalise the cast of the film. Now, the casting is being done by Nitesh Tiwari. The latest we heard is that Vijay Sethupati is out, and makers have approached Harman Baweja who did very well in Scoop.
Another Redditor pointed out that Ramayana was supposed to come in 2020 but Corona changed planned. SS Rajamouli had initially thought of it with Mahesh Babu as Lord Rama. When the casting of Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt was announced as Ram and Sita, no one liked it. Now, Sai Pallavi is back as she has managed dates for the same.
It seems the movie will be formally announced on Ram Navami 2024. It is known as the birth anniversary of Lord Rama.