Alia Bhatt as Sita and Suriya stars as Lord Rama; Vishnu Manchu reveals dream cast for his Ramayana: ‘The script and dialogues are ready’

He then revealed, “Funny that you ask, but I already have a script about Ravana. It covers his story from his birth to death. For the same, I approached Suriya in 2009 to play Ram. But, because the budgets were not working out for me, it didn’t work out. The director of the film was supposed to be the legendary filmmaker Raghavendra Rao. My father was supposed to play the role of Ravana. I have the script and dialogues ready for it, but I don’t know if I will ever be able to make it.”

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He then expressed the desire to play the role of Lord Hanuman. “But, Raghavendra sir didn’t want me to play Hanuman. He wanted me to play Indrajeet. But, I would probably want Suriya’s brother Karthi to play Indrajeet.” He added, “The character of Lakshman is very soft, I would probably cast Jr NTR’s older brother Kalyan Ram. For Jatayu, I would cast Sathyaraj sir. The Katappa from Baahubali.”

Vishnu Manchu recently pulled off a big budget mythological drama Kannappa, where he played the titular role while actors Akshay Kumar, Prabhas and Mohanlal played Lord Shiva, Rudra and Kirata, respectively. The film, however, had a short run at the box office. It earned just Rs 41.75 crore.

Meanwhile, Nitesh Tiwari recently surprised his fans by sharing a glimpse of his version of Ramayana, where actor Ranbir Kapoor is playing the role of Lord Rama. Actress Sai Pallavi is playing Goddess Sita and Yash is playing Ravana. The first part of the film is scheduled to release on Diwali next year. Other films to have taken inspiration from mythology were Ayan Mukerji’s Brahmastra (2022) and Nag Ashwin’s Kalki: 2898 AD (2024). Both films earned well at the box office.