Madhu Mantena Varma signs MoU with UP government for Ramayana

Filmmaker Madhu Mantena Varma on Thursday (22 February) said he has signed a memorandam of understanding with the Uttar Pradesh government to make his upcoming film Ramayana in the state.

The agreement was sealed at the second and final day of the ongoing UP Investors Summit 2018 in Lucknow, he said.

At the meet, Varma also shared his vision of making Ramayana as India's most expensive film with a budget of Rs500 crore, adding he regarded the project as an effort to retell Indian mythology to all the generations in all its audiovisual glory with the help of the latest technology and visual effects. He said that his vision was inspired by the life work of Ananth Pai, famously known as Uncle Pai, of the popular Amar Chitra Katha comics.

Uttar Pradesh's principal secretarty and Film Bandhu chairman Awanish Kumar Awasthi announced that Film Bandhu will fully support the efforts of making Ramayana in Uttar Pradesh.

Introducing Varma as the producer of India's first Rs100 crore film Ghajini (2008), the UP government personnel expressed their confidence in the project.

Varma is also the co-founder of the production house Phantom Films that produced films like Queen (2014), Udta Punjab (2016), Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016) and Trapped (2017), among others.

Ramayana is backed by a triumvirate of film producers, Allu Aravind, Namit Malhotra and Varma who have collaborated for the first time to make India's most ambitious project.

The film will be shot in 3D and will be released as a three-part series in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.