Photo: Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai in Jodhaa Akbar

Zayed Khan will play Lakshman and Amitabh Bachchan will play Dashrath.

The Legend of Rama will be produced and directed by Sanjay Khan, who is Hrithik Roshan’s father-in-law and Zayed Khan’s father.

The Legend of Rama will be written by Sanjay Khan along with Farrukh Dhondy.

Farrukh Dhondy has been quoted as saying that The Legend of Rama will be a modernized version of the Ramayana, and that it will be the Ramayana in The Lord Of The Rings genre. He also added that the screenplay has the motion, motivation and movement of a Shakespearean play.

I don’t know if you have understand what that means, because I certainly haven’t.

Knowing Sanjay Khan’s penchant for laborious work (Abdullah, The Sword of Tipu Sultan TV series), I expect The Legend of Rama to be a pedestrian retelling of the story, that will trundle along in a beleaguered manner. The characters will be flat and unidimensional. Rama will be a goody-two-shoes, Lakshman even more so, and Sita’s bharatiya nari cloying martyrdom will make you gag.

Which is sad on two counts. One, that it will not explore the dark side of Rama, his doubts and insecurity; ditto for Lakshman. It will not probe Sita’s strength of mind.

Two, The Legend of Rama will be a waste of fine actors like Amitabh Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan, as also the chemistry between Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai as seen in Jodha Akbar and before that, Dhoom 2.

And what is with Zayed Khan playing Lakshman, or variations of Lakshman, in every second movie? In Main Hoon Na, his character is based on the Lakshmanesque loyal younger brother thing. He is even called Lakshman in the movie, for God’s sake. Then again, he plays the youngest brother in Yuvraaj, a story of three brothers.

Casting hasn’t been announced for Ravan’s character though. I won’t waste your time asking you who do you think should be cast as Ravan. I am sure they will predictably cast Boman Irani as Ravan, who will ham his way through the movie.

I wish someone would take the Mahabharata and the Ramayan and do something good with it. If nothing else, they could pick up Ashok Banker’s Ramayan. At least the characters have depth and the sci-fi take is very interesting.

Ramayan 3392 AD Liquid Comics' sci-fi series

The Ramayan 3392 AD Hollywood movie adaptation will be produced by Mark Canton, who has earlier produced 300 and Land of the Dead. Ramayan 3392 AD will be adapted for the silver screen by John Collee, screenwriter of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Happy feet. The sci-fi series is a graphic novel created by self-help and spirituality guru Deepak Chopra and filmmaker Shekhar Kapoor, in 2001.

Sharad Devarajan  and Deepak Chopra’s son, Gotham Chopra, will be the executive producers of Ramayan 3392 AD, with Atmosphere Entertainment.

Ramayan 3392 AD is based on the ancient mythological epic Ramayana, written in Sanskrit by a great sage name Valmiki.

The Ramayana, that has 24,000 versions spanning seven books, is – rather simplistically put – a holy book for the Hindus in India. The epic is not just the story of Prince Rama, his younger brother Lakshman, their disinheritance and banishment for 14 years, and the final war waged against Ravana of Lanka to rescue Rama’s wife, Sita. The epic is more a vision of a kingdom governed by Dharma (duty in terms of the right thing to do) and the values by which a good life should be led. It embodies the philosophies and thoughts of sages in Ancient India.

Ramayan 3392 AD Liquid Comics' sci-fi series panel

Ramayan 3392 AD is written by Shamik Dasgupta and illustrated by Abhishek Singh. Ramayan 3392 AD  is, ostensibly, a recreation of the classic in a post-apocalyptic world, where the world is in danger of being taken over by Ravana, king of a half-human half-cybernetic race of Asuras. The good humans live in Aryavrata, ruled by King Dashrath who have four sons, the eldest being Rama, followed by Lakshman, Shatrughan and Bharat. Rama is exiled due to the evil machinations of Ravana. In order to prevent the world from anarchy, Rama has to take on the Ravana’s massive army.

Apart from the upcoming Ramayan 3392 AD Hollywood movie, a Ramayan 3392 AD MMO video game is also the on the cards, with Virgin Comics trying aggressively to spin off its comics as game and movie properties.

Meanwhile, Hindus are upset that the 3392AD Hollywood movie version may hurt Hindu sentiments. Earlier, The Love Guru led to protests in India, US and UK. A re-imagined version of the Ramayana is bound to get into trouble as well.