Renowned filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, known for films such as ‘Bandit Queen’ and ‘Elizabeth’, has been signed on to direct a series based on ‘The Immortals of Meluha’, the first of the ‘Shiva Trilogy’ penned by Amish Tripathi.
Suparn S. Varma, dialogue writer of the hit Prime Video series, ‘The Family Man’, will be the showrunner and co-director of the series. The series will be the maiden project of Roy Price’s film and television production house, International Art Machine.
Other projects on the production house’s opening slate are Dibakar Banerjee's political thriller ‘Gods’ and 'The Kitty Party’ led by Preity G. Zinta.
Sharing his thoughts on the project, Kapur said: “Amish’s ‘Shiva Trilogy’ has been India’s great publishing sensation, crossing every age and class. It’s not just mythology, it’s modern storytelling at its best, lending itself to a beautiful international series.”
Reflecting on how the trilogy has become a pop-culture phenomenon, Varma said: “It is a series of genre-defining books. I just loved the re-imagining and the world-building...”
The showrunner promises to set a precedent with the ambitious show. “The scale of vision and the ambition of our show visually and emotionally is a huge task, but we want to bring to audiences a vision that has never been seen before on screens,” Varma added.
Amish Tripathi, the author of the celebrated trilogy, also claimed excitement to see his books come alive on screen.
“One couldn’t have asked for a better team than this to take my books into the audio-visual world. Shekhar is an Oscar-winning filmmaker. He is among the best living Indian directors. Roy is among the most successful Hollywood executives, having created Emmy- and BAFTA-winning series,” Tripathi said.
‘The Immortals of Meluha’ is the first book in the ‘Shiva trilogy’ and is a re-telling of the life of deity Shiva.
