"Ramayana - Rise of a Legend", Dir Nitesh Tiwari, 2026

"Ramayana - Rise of a Legend" is a lavishly mounted 2 part epic adaptation of the widely known Indian myth and religious text "The Ramayana" from producer and CEO of global visual effects company "DNeg" (formerly Double Negative, a British VFX company), Namit Malhotra and directed by Nitesh Tiwari of which part 1 was released globally on November 5th 2026 with the second part due on the same date in 2028 to coincide with the Hindu festival of Deewali.

I have a special interest in the subject as far as film adaptations due to my connection to what I consider a previous high cinematic benchmark, but using animation, the 1992 Indo-Japanese "Ramayana - The Legend of Prince Rama" produced by Yugo Sako with creative direction by Indian animator Ram Mohan and his Japanese counterpart Koichi Sasaki.

That said, I don't claim to be an expert in the subject despite being Hindu by birth and my education on the Ramayana is primarily from films I was aware of growing up and parts of the epic told to me by my mother whereas in some parts of India, especially in the South where my family hail from, the story is imbibed as a daily ritual supported by numerous film adaptations spanning the history of cinema on the subcontinent, endless TV serial adaptations, comics and relatively recently, a 1980's TV serialised adaptation that was so popular that it inevitably influenced any that came later. Malhotra's aim in this film is to bring the story, as an archetypal and influential myth, to a wider audience much like the intended goal of Yugo Sako, as an example of world history and myth on a par with the Greek and Roman myths and not localised to India, though Indians will be very familiar with it in all it's many forms - and there are countless versions and variations across the subcontinent. From a commercial perspective the film has been the subject of an intense publicity campaign in the U.S, viewed as a primary market for this kind of visual effects heavy film, and it is being pitched as a kind of "Lord of The Rings" / "Avatar" of similarly epic proportions for non-Indian audiences and with a level of visual effects to match any or all tentpole blockbusters from Hollywood - a major concern for Malhotra since VFX work in Indian cinema is often derided as being second rate, this despite the fact that DNeg as a company has built up an enviable track record in that area as a vendor for directors like Christopher Nolan and working alongside top-tier industry companies like ILM and Weta.

However, the comparison with Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" is only really offered as a convenient point of reference of a type and scale of epic cinema for audiences who have no knowledge of the Ramayana and may result in some confusion over whether this is pure fantasy or literal truth - the key difference is that there is only one (actually several volumes of) "Lord of The Rings" as a fictional literary work that fans are intimately familiar with such that any cinematic adaptation would never be able to deviate from it whereas there is no definitive version of the Ramayana due to the multiplicity of versions of what stemmed from an oral tradition spanning centuries. For the purposes of this adaptation the main sources appear to be that by the poet Valmiki and perhaps the 1980's TV series and subsequently treads a difficult path to please those regional Indian audiences very familiar with the story as a religious text and non-Indians who are expecting an epic scaled adventure stripped of any overt religious significance. Ramayana Part 1 is a beautifully mounted and spectacular epic that delivers on all fronts in terms of the VFX alongside lavish art direction, costumes and performances of the cast while taking liberties here and there in terms of plot details that only someone thoroughly versed in the Ramayana might take issue with, for example, it's generally accepted that there is a geographical element to the story in that it begins in North India and ends in the South India and possibly on the island of Lanka at India's southern most tip, taking in forests and deserts in-between, however in the film there is no explicit mention of geography at all and we get no sense of where places are other than their names. This may be a deliberate intention on the part of the film makers to sidestep issues around regional and cultural biases that are very prevalent in India and that result in the various versions of the myth that exist - as an example, in the South the story's villain Ravana is considered a heroic character as a representative of Dravidian culture and the film acknowledges this by depicting him in a more nuanced way than simply a pantomime villain with nefarious designs on the hero Rama's wife, Sita, almost to the extent that his role, as performed by South Indian Telugu star "Yash", becomes the film's star turn. "Bollywood" star Ranbir Kapoor is cast as "Rama" with Sai Pallavi as "Sita" and Ravi Dubey as "Lakshmana" along with a stellar cast of Indian actors from both the North and South film industries and the film serves as an excellent primer, next to the 1992 Indo-Japanese "Anime" adaptation - plot liberties and creative and dramatic license and the odd VFX hiccup aside - for the Ramayana for both Indian and international audiences on a scale to match Cecil B De Mille's earlier "The Ten Commandments" as a grand cinematic epic.

"Ramayana -Rise of a Legend",

Prod: Namit Malhotra, Dir: Nitesh Tiwari,

2026

Ravi Swami, 07/11/26