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Exclusive: Aamir Khan Sets Sights on Epic 'Mahabharata' Film Series
The actor-producer revealed his plans to begin work on a multi-part epic inspired by the ancient Indian text, which is one of his “biggest ambitions.”
Aamir Khan, one of Indian cinema’s most influential figures, has set his sights on adapting the sprawling epic story of The Mahabharata. In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India, Khan revealed his ambition to bring the mythological saga to screen, calling it one of "his biggest ambitions.”
“One ambition that I have, which I'm hoping to start work on this year is working on The Mahabharata,” Khan said. “It’ll take a while because, first off, just the writing process will take a few years.”
The Mahabharata has inspired countless artistic adaptations over the decades, including B.R. Chopra’s landmark television series that aired in the late 1980s and became a cultural phenomenon. In cinema, however, few attempts have matched the scale and complexity of the original text.
In 2013, an animated version of the Mahabharata featured an ensemble of Bollywood's biggest stars lending their voices — Amitabh Bachchan as Bheeshma, Ajay Devgn as Arjun, Vidya Balan as Draupadi, Manoj Bajpayee as Yudhishthir, Sunny Deol as Bheem, Jackie Shroff as Duryodhan, and Anil Kapoor as Karna.
SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali franchise, widely seen as India’s answer to global fantasy sagas, borrowed liberally from the Mahabharata’s thematic core — power struggles within a royal family, questions of destiny, dharma, and betrayal — yet stopped short of being a direct retelling.
Khan, known for his meticulous approach to filmmaking, emphasised that this project would take years to develop and would likely span multiple films. “I don’t think you can tell the story of the Mahabharata in one film. It would be multiple films. It’s too early to say, but we might need multiple directors,” he said.
He also floated the idea of shooting the films simultaneously, citing The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a precedent: “If you do one after the other, then it'll take very long... In The Lord of the Rings, they shot all three parts together. Something like that, I think.”
While he is committed to producing the project, Khan has yet to decide whether he will appear on-screen. “We should cast the film based on who's appropriate for each part,” he said.
With no director attached and writing only set to begin this year, Khan’s vision remains in its early stages. But if realised, it would mark one of Indian cinema’s most ambitious undertakings — and potentially redefine the genre of mythological fantasy in the country.