Mukesh Khanna as Shaktimaan (courtesy iammukeshkhanna)

New Delhi:

Actor Mukesh Khanna, best known for playing the titular superhero in the TV show Shaktimaan, announced that he will be making a three-film series based on the superhero. In an Instagram post on Friday, the 62-year-old actor made the announcement in Hindi and wrote: “Ab baat duniya ko batane layak ho gai hai ki Shaktimaan dobara abtarit ho raha hai. Ji haan Shaktimaan ke doston , ab officially ye bata raha hoon ki main Shaktimaan 2 le kar aa raha hoon (It’s time to tell the world that Shaktimaan is being reincarnated. Yes, friends of Shaktimaan, I am now officially stating that I am bringing Shaktimaan 2 soon. That too not on TV channel or OTT but as a trilogy, in the form of three films on the big screen).”

In the second part of his post, Mukesh Khanna added that: “Details dheere dheere hum disclose karenge. Filhaal itna bata sakta hoon ek bahut bade production house ke saath maine haath milaya hai is himalayan task ko anjaam dene ke liye (Details will be disclosed gradually. For now, I can say that I have collaborated with a big production house to bring his Herculean task to life).”

Mukesh Khanna wrapped his post with a promise that the new Shaktimaan films will be bigger than Hrithik Roshan’s superhero franchise Krrish, and also Shah Rukh Khan’s Ra.One – Mr Khanna appears to have misspelled Ra.One as ‘Raavan‘, which too is a movie but a crime thriller and not a superhero sci-fi one. Mukesh Khanna also shared the link of a Bollywood Hungama report, which states that work on the first film of the Shaktimaan series will begin in 2021.

Read Mukesh Khanna’s Shaktimaan trilogy announcement here:

In an interview with Bombay Times earlier this year, Mukesh Khanna had said: “For the last three years, we have been working towards bringing out the second edition of Shaktimaan, which is contemporary, but rooted in our values. We were working on the sequel because people wanted to know, aage kya hua.” Speaking to Mumbai Mirror just a month later, Mr Khanna had said: “The new version of Shaktimaan cannot be the way Ekta Kapoor made Mahabharat (in 2008) by putting a tattoo on Draupadi’s shoulder. She had said that she was making Mahabharat for modern people. Sanskriti kabhi modern nahi ho sakti, putri. Jis din Sanskriti ko modern karoge, khatam ho jayegi‘ (Culture can never be modern. The day you try to make culture modern, it will be over).”

Shaktimaan is said to be India’s first superhero show, which aired on Doordarshan from 1997 to 2005. Mr Khanna played the famous superhero and his alter ego Pandit Gangadhar Vidyadhar Mayadhar Omkarnath Shastri in it.