Rana Daggubati on dream project Hiranyakashyap: ‘It will change my life and filmmaking’

He said, “It was the first Amar Chitra Katha story that… Or the most palpable Amar Chitra Katha story that… happened across the universe, right? And its mythology needs to be retold. It was told very well in the black-and-white era. So, we need to make sure we’re telling it differently and better. And how do we connect it to an audience from 0 to 80? Which the story already has done. So, work on that has been going on for a while. And I think..we removed a sense of time from it. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to get done.”

The actor-producer added, “So, I have a lot of people working on it. I have Mr Trivikram now. Every time he’s done with a film, he works on it (Hiranyakashayp) in bits and pieces. There’s a team that is putting all of the stories of the Bhagavata Purana together. So, once you get in, it’s really a maze of things to do. And somewhere I feel that it will be a film that will change the course of my life and filmmaking for a long period of time. That’s really what we want to achieve with that film.”

Meanwhile, Kalki 2898 AD, which has Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan, Deepika Padukone and Prabhas in the lead roles, is going to be the next big thing to come from Telugu. When asked about the project, Rana Daggubati, whose company Spirit Media is the international marketing and distribution partner of Kalki 2898 AD, said, “The first time I got jealous seeing somebody was when I went to the sets of Kalki. Growing up, visual effects for me was Star Wars. That’s a film that I just loved watching. Funnily, Nagi (Nag Ashwin) also liked watching that film. And very few people get it. Like science fiction and all of it is not very mainstream.”

He added, “And when I walked into the set, I was like, ‘Sh*t, he’s making this. Like he’s making everything that I dreamt of.’ And I remember I didn’t talk to him that day. I went back home and I called him and said, ‘Dude, I’m really jealous. I don’t know why.’ And he said, ‘Dude, only when you’re jealous I know I’m doing the right things.’ And it’s a story from mythology into science fiction. I’m very excited about what that film will do. It’s got the biggest star cast. It’s got everything.”