Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 23, 2017)

Krishna Udayasankar, the Singapore-based Indian author of the bestselling Aryavarta Chronicles series (Govinda, Kauravaand, Kurukshetra), a modern-retelling of the Mahabharata, has just sold the rights of her 2016 novel, Immortal, to Phantom Films. It will be adapted for screen as a trilogy on Ashwatthama, the legendary warrior who is cursed with immortality by Krishna, in a contemporary setting. Suffering insurmountable pain, he has been roaming the earth for a millennium in search for mortality as a result of which the story also spans 4000 years.

A blend of history, myth and fantasy, Immortal narrates the story of a historian-for-hire Professor Bharadvaj who is reluctantly pulled into a hunt for the ‘vajra’, a historical artifact which is believed to possess incredible alchemical power. The academician has spent many lifetimes in different identities searching for it in an effort to find a way out of his unending existence. The adventure takes him through the secret passages beneath the Somnath Temple to the home of the siddhas in the Nilgiris to the deserts of Pakistan.

The film is on the lines of a ‘quest genre’, a historical as well as an action-adventure that will take the flawed hero on a trail across the sub-continent, much like Indiana Jones. Phantom’s Madhu Mantena confirms the news. “Yes, the film is a trilogy on Ashwathama in a modern-context. It’s a very powerful story written beautifully by Krishna Udayasankar and a concept that has not been ‘experienced’ on the big screen, that too on such a huge scale. We are very excited to start this journey,” the filmmaker added.