Think ‘Avatar’, ‘Avengers’ or ‘The Odyssey’. That’s ‘Ramayana’ producer Namit Malhotra’s answer when asked the inevitable question: why make a new rendition of a story that is so loved, so familiar and so intertwined into the consciousness of virtually every Indian?

As speculation builds up, Malhotra, according to a PTI report from New Delhi yesterday, says his ambition is to bring the story of Lord Ram to the big screen on an unprecedented scale, with 3D and IMAX technology and a budget comparable to Hollywood spectacles such as ‘The Lord of the Rings’.

With a rumoured budget of Rs 4,000 crore (approximately USD 422 million as of yesterday’s forex rate) for the two-part series — Malhotra has never confirmed it — the first part of the much discussed ‘Ramayana’ releases on Thursday (Nov. 5), just three days ahead of Diwali on Sunday.

“In India, there are a lot of questions that ‘Why are they making the Ramayana when there’s been so many Ramayanas? We already know the story.’ And I’m like, ‘Listen, we’re making it because we want to show you the version of this story that you’ve never seen’,” Malhotra told PTI in an interview.

He added: “No television show, no street play, no Ram Leela has ever shown you ‘Ramayana’ in this scale and spectacle that we are making…Much like an ‘Avatar’ or an ‘Avengers’ movie or think about ‘Spider-Man’ or ‘The Odyssey’…

“We’re putting Ramayana right up there next to all of those spectacles.”

The filmmaker, whose producing credits include Ayan Mukerji’s ‘Brahmastra: Part One – Shiva’and the Hollywood film ‘The Garfield Movie’, has backed the two-part cinematic adaptation of Valmiki’s epic poem through his studio Prime Focus Studios in association with Oscar-winning VFX studio DNEG and Yash’s Monster Mind Creations.

Malhotra is the global CEO of DNEG that has won eight Academy Awards for ‘Inception’, ‘Interstellar’, ‘Ex Machina’, ‘Blade Runner 2049’, ‘First Man’, ‘Tenet’, ‘Dune’ and ‘Dune: Part Two’, the PTI report added.

His latest project ‘Ramayana’, directed by Nitesh Tiwari, stars Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Rama, Sai Pallavi as Sita, Yash as Ravana and Ravi Dubey as Lakshman.

With this film, Malhotra wants to make a case that India can also produce a grand spectacle movie.

“If you think about the West, they are the most potent audience for anything that’s got a grand epic spectacle. And that’s just not how Indian films have been made.

“So while India makes terrific Indian movies, whether it is ‘Baahubali’, ‘Dhurandhar’ or any of the big, super-duper hit films, they are not spectacles the way Hollywood thinks about spectacles.

“We are first trying to narrow that gap down and saying, ‘If you can do it, we can do it too’. There’s no reason for us to have any discrepancy.

So, every person in Hollywood should acknowledge that India can also do something as good, if not bigger, than what they do,” he explained.

Malhotra said he also hopes to introduce Western audiences to the story of Ramayana, which is considered one of India’s greatest epics.

“Just imagine I’m standing here and saying, ‘You guys know ‘The Odyssey’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, ‘Harry Potter’, and ‘Star Wars’, but do you know that Ramayana came before all of these great epics?

“And it’s not trying to copy or borrow from you. In fact, it’s an original story. It’s original characters, an original world that has been envisioned. So they are excited about it. And that’s why I think that the opportunity to connect with the audience is very exciting,” said the producer, who held a grand world premiere of the movie in the US last week.