Nitesh Tiwari reveals 6.5 years went into Ravana-Jatayu fight, 50 designs created for Pushpak Viman for Ramayana

The team also spent nearly two years working on the Pushpak Viman, exploring dozens of designs before settling on the final look.

Bringing Ramayana: Rise of a Legend to the big screen has taken years of planning and work, and director Nitesh Tiwari has now shared a glimpse of what went into creating some of its key sequences. In a conversation with Shreyas Media, he revealed that the Ravana-Jatayu fight alone took six and a half years to complete. The team also spent nearly two years working on the Pushpak Viman, exploring dozens of designs before settling on the final look. He spoke about the thousands of people involved in the process and the amount of work required to get even one action sequence right.

Ramayana: Six and a half years to create one action sequence between Yash's Ravana and Jatayu.

Ramayana: Rise of a Legend fight took six and a half years to complete

The Ravana and Jatayu fight took years of planning and work to bring to life. The filmmaker revealed that the team spent six and a half years bringing this one sequence together, from the first discussion with the artist to its final completion. “You know how much time it has taken for us to finish the Ravana and Jatayu fight? From the time I briefed the previous artist to the time we finished the whole thing, six and a half years. One action sequence. I can go on and on about it for an hour just to tell you how much effort went into making everything from scratch. And thousands of people have worked on it,” he said.

50 designs for Pushpak Viman and two years of work

The team also spent close to two years working on the Pushpak Viman, Ravana's mythical flying vehicle. Nitesh revealed that the final design went through several changes and looked very different from what they had initially planned. Since the Ravana-Jatayu fight had originally been developed around the earlier design, the team had to revisit parts of the sequence and make multiple changes.

“We took close to two years to arrive at that. And then a lot of things changed, which is why it took us so long to shape the Ravana and Jatayu fight. Because previously, we assumed the design of Pushpak Viman would be something like that, and we shaped the sequence around it. And when we loved the final design, which was completely different from what we had first thought, we had to do a lot of iterations. We created some 40-50 designs for Pushpak Viman before finalising the one you see in the film. We didn't want something that did look like it could fly; we wanted some kind of science to go into it. Because I believe, we all believe there was science behind everything that happened that time,” he explained.

Ranbir Kapoor on why VFX artists deserve credit

Defending the massive visual effects work going into Ramayana, Ranbir Kapoor recently called out the audience's habit of dismissing elaborate CGI as AI-generated. He admitted that it feels terrible to see the crew's efforts reduced to an AI tag, explaining that there are actually thousands of artists working around the clock. Ranbir emphasised that it takes days of gruelling manual effort just to perfect a single frame and bring that level of finesse to the screen.

Ramayana cast and release date

Ranbir Kapoor plays Lord Rama, Sai Pallavi stars as Sita, while Yash takes on the role of Ravana. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari, Ramayana is planned as a two-part film. The first instalment is set to arrive in theatres on Diwali 2026, with the second part scheduled for 2027. However, the media in the West is claiming that the sequel will arrive in Diwali 2028.