The Immortal Ashwatthama shelved for the second time – Full Story

The film was announced with Vicky Kaushal and Sara Ali Khan in the lead, backed by Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP Pictures. However, the pandemic struck in 2020 and that led to the film being delayed. The pre-production resumed and the film started to make progress.

Now the pre-production work had been going on for 3 years. Ample amount of money has been spent on the recce, pere-visualization and also the storyboard. Ronnie Screwvala suffered a loss of Rs. 20 crores even before the film began and hence decided to back out from the project. The film was ultimately shelved.

Director Aditya Dhar was keen on making the film with Vicky Kaushal and took the film to multiple producers in the market, finally getting Jio on board to market it. Jio Studio came on board with the condition that the lead actor should be someone with a bigger mass appeal in order to recover the money invested. After much hesitation, Aditya agreed.

Samantha on the other hand had to back off from the project leaving the subject without any sort of cast. 

Aditya Dhar approached NTR Jr. to lead his film, however, he was not too keen on the subject. The same idea then went to Yash, who again refused to be a part of the film as Superhero wasn’t really a genre, he was willing to explore.

The film finally went to Ranveer Singh. but he had to make a choice between The Immortal Ashwatthama and Shaktimaan.

Shaktimaan was of course a bigger IP, but the team is not even ready with a screenplay yet. He did not say yes or no to the Immortal Ashwatthama but Jio eventually decided to let him go as they wanted a bigger star to recover the budget.

But now the stakeholders believe that taking a hit of Rs 30 crore is better than investing Rs. 300 to 350 crore on the project in the long run.

So the film has been shelved again. Aditya Dhar may try to get back to the project in the futurebut there is no guarantee. What do you think can be done to make this project happen?

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