Vivek Agnihotri's 'Parva' to be a Kannada-Hindi bilingual, 'but expect it in English & Spanish also', says the director

Vivek Agnihotri is evidently a man on a mission because he intends to take his next project Parva to a global audience. The Vaccine War filmmaker was in Bengaluru on Saturday, October 21, to formally announce that his next film would take on Kannada author Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa's epic novel Parva and that he will turn it into a three-part saga bearing the title 'Parva: An Epic Tale of Dharma’. The project, at the moment, will be a Kannada-Hindi bilingual.

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But Vivek Agnihotri's passion for bringing the literary piece to life doesn't end there. Turns out, he is super keen on employing AI to render the film in foreign languages including Spanish and English. “This great work should be seen not just by the English-speaking people but also by the Spanish-speaking audience,” said Vivek Agnihotri, adding that Spanish is the second-most spoken in the United States after English. The event also saw the team of ‘Parva: An Epic Tale of Dharma’ launching the first-look poster of the film.

The announcement to adapt Parva for the screen on the heels of the release of The Vaccine War, Vivek Agnihotri’s dramatic take on the coronavirus pandemic and how the Indian medical department’s efforts led to the development of Covaxin. The writer-director was joined by his wife and actress, Pallavi Joshi, well-known actor Prakash Belawadi and author Dr. SL Bhyrappa himself during the poster launch when it came to light that the latter would be functioning as the co-writer on the ambitious Parva project. 

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Parva, of course, is an alluring re-telling of the Mahabharata with Dr. SL Bhyrappa weaving the mighty tale as a series of soliloquies or ‘personal reflections’ of the central characters. The 1979 novel has been translated into seven Indian and three foreign languages, including English, Russian and Chinese.

“Who knows, maybe it (the film) will be done in Chinese, Japanese and Russian, why not,” said Vivek Agnihotri in his speech. He also shared that the project is still in the development stage.