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Yash-starrer Toxic might have failed at the box office but the actor-producer is betting big on his next release, Ramayana. The film is being co-produced by Yash, along with Namit Malhotra. Here, Yash is playing Ravana, with Ranbir Kapoor playing Lord Rama and Sai Pallavi playing Sita. Ramayana is just a few weeks away from its release and recently, the team of the film had a promotional event for the same in Hyderabad. At the event, Yash urged his fans not to find faults in the film’s visual effects and watch it with an “open mind.”

He said, “Sometimes when someone tries to do things like this… He has gambled his reputation and money to put this film on a global platform. Please don’t try to find small faults in the VFX. It will never happen again if we lose people like him (Namit) now. It will take more years. We will go back in time. Let’s see the film with an open mind. He has always taken every piece of feedback and criticism and tried to do it better. I request you from my side. If you like the film, let’s come together and show the world.”

Praising Namit, who previously claimed that the two films were being made on a budget of Rs 4,000 crore, Yash said, “Anybody can dream of making a movie, but only a few people will have that kind of passion, dedication, determination and madness. As an Indian, I am telling you, we need to protect this guy. It’s our responsibility because this man was comfortably doing business in LA.”

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He added, “Every time I met him, he always spoke about one thing: ‘We all are doing so much and Indians have done so much, but we should do something for our Indian film industry and I want to do it. I am getting Oscars, but I am not happy. I want our country to be placed at that level and that’s the day I am going to be happy.’ This is what he told me.”

At the Telugu pre-release event of Ramayana on Monday, Namit Malhotra also unveiled a BTS video and announced that the Ramayana franchise will go beyond the two films. “When we were conceiving this, this was not meant to be just a film. This was meant to be much more than that. The idea is not to make one or two movies and stop the journey of Rama. In fact, it is to start this journey. On the back of this movie, we can actually start to open up the different areas of engagement,” he said.

The clip showed a franchise expansion plan, which will include video games based on the property, a full merchandise of apparel, toys, gadgets and home furnishings, spin-off movies, TV shows, animated films, theme park experiences, a Broadway musical adaptation, and virtual reality augmented experiences. “When you hear stories about Star Wars, when you hear about Marvel or DC, the idea is that they’ve created what they call a universe. Ramayana is a universe. It is a universe in which we all live, in which we all interact and we all have different types of engagements,” he added.

Apart from Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, Yash and Ravie Dubey, the film also features Sunny Deol as Hanuman, Arun Govil as King Dasharatha, Indira Krishna as Queen Kaushalya, Lara Dutta as Queen Kaikeyi, Sonal Jha as Queen Sumitra and Sheeba Chaddha as Manthara. Directed by Nitesh Tiwari, Ramayana will release on November 5. The second part of the film will release on Diwali 2027.

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