A two-part version of epic poem the Ramayana is India's biggest ever blockbusterThe Ramayana is one of India's most famous stories – and now the heroic epic has been adapted into two mega-budget films that the team behind it are hoping will be a global event.

Mythical beasts, almighty gods, new technology: The epic blockbuster that could be India's answer to The Odyssey.

Key points

• Adaptations of the Ramayana stretch from the 9th-Century Javanese poem Kakavin Ramayana and 12th-Century Tamil interpretation Ramavataram to the 1992 Indo-Japanese anime Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama.
• And a documented $200 to 250 million (£147.5m to £184m) has been spent on Ramayana, with a similar budget attached to its sequel (due to be issued in November 2027).
• The Ramayana is believed to have been written around the 4BC by Valmiki, a poet and maharishi who composed almost 24, 000 shlokas (verses) telling the tale.
• The film's producer and mastermind Namit Malhotra discussions concerning Ramayana as a global event, aimed at audiences everywhere.
• Malhotra's name is on the posters, but the acclaimed Nitesh Tiwari is Ramayana's director.

Meanwhile, the Ramayana is one of India's most famous stories – and now the heroic epic has been adapted into two mega-budget films that the team behind it are hoping will be a global event.

This year, against the backdrop of the hit superhero movies and kids' animations, an adaptation of an ancient poem involving mythical beasts, almighty gods and a hero toting a bow and arrow has been a smash at the box office: Christopher Nolan's stirring take on Homer's Odyssey.

But it may not be the only many-thousand-year-old epic verse to become a big-screen sensation this year. That's, at least, what the team behind a new two-part adaptation of Hindu poem the Ramayana will be hoping. The first part is due to be published globally in November, to coincide with the Hindu Diwali festival, and it's been produced on a budget that is unprecedented for an Indian film.

Notably, the Ramayana is believed to have been written around the 4BC by Valmiki, a poet and maharishi who composed almost 24, 000 shlokas (verses) telling the tale. It centres on Rama, a prince and avatar of the Hindu god of preservation Vishnu, whose wife Sita is kidnapped by the wicked king Ravana, leaving Rama with the task of rescuing her.

Notably, the story has been adapted plenty of times before, and more than two billion residents worldwide are thought to be familiar with it. But it has never been informed on quite such a scale as this. Sony Pictures lately came on board as international distributors. A-list Indian film stars Ranbir Kapoor (Rama) and Yash (Ravana) are in leading roles. Hollywood composers Hans Zimmer and AR Rahman are on the soundtrack.

And a documented $200 to 250 million (£147.5m to £184m) has been spent on Ramayana, with a similar budget attached to its sequel (due to be issued in November 2027). That makes them both easily the most expensive Indian films ever created, way more than the $68 million (£50m) spent on the next most expensive film, 2024's Kalki 2898 AD. The total amount spent on the two forthcoming Ramayana films is double the combined budget of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2, and not far below that of the entire Hobbit trilogy ($623m or £460m).

Meanwhile, the film's producer and mastermind Namit Malhotra discussions concerning Ramayana as a global event, aimed at audiences everywhere. "This was always conceived to be for the world, " he tells the BBC. "From India, for the world."

In practice, the stories of Ramayana have been informed by every Indian grandmother to their grandkid. It's like when you learn regarding Santa Claus or Jesus Christ – Namit Malhotra.

As evidenced by the titles in the trailer and on all the posters for the first film, this is "Namit Malhotra's Ramayana", a visually splendid epic that places Malhotra's expertise in visual effects front and centre. The son of a Bollywood producer and grandson of a cinematographer, Malhotra began a VFX business – now known as Double Negative, or DNEG – in his dad's garage in Mumbai aged 19. The firm has since worked on numerous films – including Blade Runner 2049, Oppenheimer, all three Dune films, and, yes, The Odyssey itself – and won a total of eight Oscars.

Malhotra's name is on the posters, but the acclaimed Nitesh Tiwari is Ramayana's director. He notes the recent success of Indian cinema worldwide, citing such films as 2022's global action movie hit RRR (which took $145m/£107m at the global box office) and 2023's crime drama Animal ($95m/£70m). "More Indian films have started to find acceptance with audiences globally, " he notes. "This has encouraged our film-makers to aim bigger, because the potential return on a film is no longer restricted primarily to the Indian box office."

Notably, the Ramayana story may be new to some western audiences, but its ubiquity in India is hard to overstate. "The stories of Ramayana have been told by every grandmother to their grandkid, " notes Malhotra. "It's like when you learn about Santa Claus or Jesus Christ."

"It's not just Hindu families, " notes Rajinder Dudrah, professor of Cultural Studies and the Creative Industries at Birmingham City University in the UK and author of a number of books on Indian cinema. "I think anybody who's grown up on Indian popular culture – Indians primarily, but also South Asians across the board, Bengalis, Pakistanis – will have watched variations of films which take root in the Ramayana story."

Adaptations of the Ramayana stretch from the 9th-Century Javanese poem Kakavin Ramayana and 12th-Century Tamil interpretation Ramavataram to the 1992 Indo-Japanese anime Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama. While 2010's Raavan challenges the image of the kidnapper as a villain and 2022's RRR places the story in the era of Britain's colonial rule over India, the 2008 American animation Sita Sings the Blues tells the story from the perspective of Rama's kidnapped princess.

Taken together, the developments around a two-part version of epic poem the Ramayana is India' s biggest ever point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.