Randamoozham to become India's costliest film, Mohanlal to play lead

Even as director SS Rajamouli gears up for the release of Baahubali: The Conclusion on 28 April, there comes news that a film on the Mahabharata will look to stake claim to the honour of being India's costliest film.

The film titled Randamoozham in Malayalam and Mahabharatham in five other languages, including Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, will be made in two parts. It will be directed by ad filmmaker, Shrikumar Menon. Over Rs1,000 crore is expected to be pumped into the project by billionaire, BR Shetty. 

Mohanlal is expected to play the lead role of Bheema in this film, which will be based on the book Randamoozham by veteran Malayalam writer Vasudevan Nair.

The speciality of the book is that the entire epic of Mahabharatha is told from the perspective of Bheema. Work on the film is expected to begin next year and the film's first part is expected to be released in 2020.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how Rajamouli, who had earlier announced that he would be working on a film based on the Mahabharata after the release of Baahubali: The Conclusion, will react to this news.

The director had said that at this moment, although he had plans to work on the Mahabharata, he wasn't sure when he would be able to begin work on the project.

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"If there is so much of work for Baahubali itself, imagine how much of work we will have to put in to make the Mahabharata. So, I will work on it but not immediately," is what the director had told.

It was evident that this would be a bigger project involving a sum greater than the one they had spent on Baahubali.

Although, Rajamouli has been saying he won't be starting Mahabharat immediately, he has been holding talks with top stars in Bollywood for the film.

Unconfirmed media reports suggest that Rajamouli recently met Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan and held talks with them for getting them onboard the Mahabharata project.

But all of this was prior to the announcement of Randamoozham. Now, it remains to be seen if Rajamouli will persist with his plans to make a film on the Mahabharata and if so, whether it will be made using over a Rs1,000 crore.