The cliffhanger ending of Kalki 2898 AD certainly left the audience intrigued, and director Nag Ashwin shares that work is already underway on the film’s sequel to complete the story. “Though it was a little bit, we shot some of it in the earlier schedules of the first one, about 20 days,” he says.

The film, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Prabhas and Kamal Haasan, was shot for a couple of years owing to the heavy VFX and released in June. “The second part should hopefully take less time to complete and release than the first one,” he adds.

The 38-year-old drew inspiration from the Mahabharata and feels this is the right time to introduce Indian audiences to such stories: “There is a huge audience in our country — not just in cities but also in smaller towns — that embraces Marvel and Star Wars [films]. I felt we should explore our homegrown superheroes; it is very Indian.”