Coming soon, AI-powered Kamba Ramayanam

A scene from Kamba Ramayanam in which Hanuman flies over Sri Lanka

Kamba Ramayanam will soon return to the screens in a live-action AI animation avatar. Discussions for the movie, being made by Chennai-based Muonium AI Venture Studio, started only in December, but it is already in its post-production stage. It is expected to be ready for release by this month-end, showing how AI can speed up things considerably.

The initial plan is to release it in Tamil, Hindi and English, and other languages could be considered later.

The movie is inspired by the iconic 1980s stage production by Chinmaya Yuva Kendra, Madras, for which the music was composed by the legendary KV Mahadevan.

Video Credit: Businessline

The songs performed by SP Balasubrahmanyam and Vani Jayaram will be retained in the movie. Swami Mitrananda, mentor and convener, Chinmaya Mission, Chennai and Northeast, and National Advisor, All India Chinmaya Yuva Kendra, said: “It was Swami Chinmayananda who championed Kamba Ramayanam through theatre in the 1980s, an initiative that saw performances staged globally for decades. In honour of the 75^th anniversary of Chinmaya Mission, the Chinmaya Yuva Kendra is bringing the film to screens using cutting-edge artificial intelligence, blending ancient wisdom with modern technology.” The project started off as an AI movie, but the team soon discovered that the AI engines, which were trained on certain sets of foreign video or content, could not effectively portray the emotions they wanted.

motion capture

“No AI model we tried could generate, for example, the navarasas that a trained dancer, be it in bharatanatyam or kuchipudi or kathak, could easily do. So, we decided to try live motion capture on a green screen and then use it in the film. All of this was done by volunteers, so we had students, engineers, a chartered accountant… some 30 actors, all part-time, helping us portray different characters,” Senthil Nayagam, General Partner at Muonium, told businessline.

On the advantages of using AI, he said: “After we generate a video, if someone is not happy with it, for example, with the jewels or costumes worn by Rama or Sita or the background scenery, we can rework it immediately, something that would have been very costly if you were doing it as a regular film. In fact, our budget of ₹1 crore would be less than the costume budget of a big budget movie such as Baahubali.”

“We are exploring what the future of Indian cinema can look like without losing the soul of its past,” sums up Nayagam.

Published on March 11, 2026