Bangalore, May 23: An NRI businessman based in the UAE who is producing what is being touted as India's most expensive film has brushed aside threats from an RSS organisation for planning to name the movie based on a Malayalam novel as Mahabharata.
B.R. Shetty, the founder and chairman of NMC Healthcare, whose website says the company is the UAE's largest private heath-care provider, told The Telegraph today over phone from Abu Dhabi that the film, budgeted at Rs 1,000 crore, would go ahead as planned irrespective of the threats.
K.P. Shashikala, the Kerala president of the Sangh-backed Hindu Aikya Vedi, had yesterday cautioned against the film being named Mahabharata as its script was based on Jnanpith awardee M.T. Vasudevan Nair's novel Randamoozham (Second Turn), which is an interpretation of the Mahabharata from the perspective of Pandava prince Bhima.
Shetty, one of the richest Indians in the Gulf who is also the founder and chairman of UAE Xchange, which deals primarily in remittances, foreign exchange and bill payment solutions, said nothing would stop his team from proceeding with the film.
"This film will be truly world-class and will be released globally," he said, adding that the name would not be changed.
Although the Malayalam version of the multi-lingual, which will have Malayalam actor Mohanlal playing Bhima, will borrow the novel's title Randamoozham, in all other languages the film will be titled Mahabharata.
The names of several Bollywood biggies, including Amitabh Bachchan, are doing the rounds in connection with the movie. The technical crew could be from Hollywood.
The film will be shot in Malayalam, English, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu and dubbed in other Indian and some foreign languages.
Shashikala, the Kerala chief of the Hindu Aikya Vedi, had yesterday threatened to stop the release of the film if it was titled Mahabharata. "It should have the name Mahabharata only if the script is close to the version of Vyasa (believed to be the author of the epic)," she said.
A defiant Shetty, 65, said he planned to start filming early next year in Abu Dhabi. "The filming will start here as Abu Dhabi is my home, which gave me everything," the billionaire businessman said.
Shetty, who hails from Mangalore in south Karnataka, said it was yet to be decided whether the Abu Dhabi shoot would be outdoors or in some specially made set.
"Several details like how much of it should be filmed here (in Abu Dhabi) would have to be worked out," he said. Asked about the star cast, he said an official announcement on the project's progress would be made in the end of this month.
According to the plan, the film will be made in two parts. While the first part is expected to hit the screens in 2020, the second will be released 90 days later.
The director, V.A. Shrikumar Menon, tweeted today that the casting would take six months as "we are in the process of finalising the star cast, meeting them one by one."
Shetty has for long been a key promoter of Indian art and culture in the UAE. As the chief patron of the Kerala-based Soorya India, a leading stage and film society, he has been sponsoring cultural shows for several years in various cities across the Gulf state.