Mahabharata on TV next year

The long wait for the third outing of Mahabharata should soon be over. After four years of pre-production work, the show will finally start rolling in two months, putting an end to all the rumours around it being stalled.

The long wait for the third outing of Mahabharata should soon be over. After four years of pre-production work, the show will finally start rolling in two months, putting an end to all the rumours around it being stalled. For now, production company Swastik Pictures is busy casting over 100 people for different roles in the show that will be aired on Star Plus early next year.

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Besides its epic proportions, another reason for the project’s holdup was its original producer, Bobby Bedi’s exit in 2009, with Siddharth Tewary stepping into his shoes. Bedi had already shot close to 50 episodes, which were high on animation. “When I started working on it, I was sure we would take at least six months to complete the groundwork, finalise locations and the cast. But it took us much longer to research, thanks to the scale of the project,” says Tewary.

According to sources close to the show, it neither resembles BR Chopra’s version of the 1980s nor the 2008-version produced by Ekta Kapoor.

Insiders also insist that the original plan was to place the hour-long show in the Sunday 11 am slot that Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate currently occupies. Tewary, not willing to divulge details, says, “I just loved the challenge to take on an epic like this. My company is not too old. Also, we’ve never attempted something like this. We’ll do our best.”