Prabhas-Starring ‘Adipurush’: Director Om Raut Reveals Details of Epic ‘Ramayana’ Adaptation (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Naman Ramachandran “Adipurush,” starring Prabhas (the “Baahubali” films), is one of the most anticipated Indian films of 2022.

It is directed by Om Raut, who directed Ajay Devgn-starring “Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior,” the biggest Indian box office hit of 2020 with $50 million.“Adipurush” is Raut’s take on Indian mythological epic “Ramayana,” which has been adapted for film and television numerous times in India, including a series which ran for several years on state broadcaster Doordarshan.

However, the idea for the film was born when Raut attended a screening of Japanese filmmaker Yugo Sako’s anime version of the epic, “The Prince of Light,” which he watched at the Mumbai Film Festival in the early 2000s. “I was mesmerized.

This is the way this story has to be told, very condensed… precise, yet you feel for the characters, you are rooting for Prabhu [Lord] Ram — and at the same time the presentation was so modern and so fresh and very children friendly,” Raut told Variety. “The teachings and everything was said very simply as opposed to making it a little heavy and mundane and boring and monotonous.”Raut, an engineering student at that time, was also fascinated by Japanese technology. “I said that if these foreigners can come and make our epic into such an interesting piece, what are we doing?,” said Raut. “We should do something like this and I need to tell the ‘Ramayana’ in my own way.”The idea gestated a few years while Raut moved to Syracuse University to study film and television and then worked at MTV in New York City until 2010 before deciding to return to India.