Bhumi Pednekar Joins Rishab Shetty's Shivaji Two-Parter

Bhumi Pednekar is the latest name attached to The Pride of Bharat: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and she is playing Belawadi Mallamma, the warrior queen from Karnataka remembered for refusing to yield ground.

The casting arrives the way every piece of news from this production has arrived, which is one name at a time, spaced out, each with its own announcement. It is a drip that has been running for months now, and it works, because the names keep being good ones. Rishab Shetty plays Shivaji. Arjun Rampal and Vivek Oberoi are already in. Sandeep Singh directs and produces.

Pednekar was straightforwardly a fan first. “I am a huge fan of Kantara, and Rishab Shetty’s performance in it stayed with me,” she said. “So the moment Sandeep narrated this story, the actor in me said yes immediately.” She called the part unlike anything she has played, and thanked the producers for seeing her in a register nobody had cast her in before.

What is quietly interesting is the assembly. A Kannada star is playing a Maratha king. A Hindi actor is playing a Karnataka queen. The score is by Amit Trivedi with lyrics by Prasoon Joshi, both from the Hindi industry, and the screenplay is by Rishi Virmani. For a film built around one region’s most venerated historical figure, the crew list is a deliberate map of everywhere else, which is what a two-part release aimed at the whole country has to look like on paper. Kannada cinema has been running at this scale for a while, as Rise of Ashoka is also proving.

The film is planned in two parts. Pre-production is underway now, with the shoot due to begin at the end of this year.