At San Diego Comic-Con 2023, director Nag Ashwin and Vyjayanthi Movies answered a big question posed across multiple corners of the convention: “What is Project K?” It turns out Project K was a placeholder name for the title of the upcoming film, Kalki 2898 AD.
Kalki 2898 AD, scheduled to release in 2024, generated much buzz for a number of reasons. To start, it was the first movie produced in India to be presented at Comic-Con — and in the massive Hall H. And the star power in the film is undeniable. Kalki 2898 AD’s cast includes Kamal Haasan, Prabhas, Deepika Padukone, and Amitabh Bachan. While they may be less familiar to audiences in the West, each of these actors are icons of Indian cinema in their own way — and they are joining forces for this project that promises to be genre-bending.
First and foremost, Kalki 2898 AD is a sci-fi epic. The teaser trailer revealed at Comic-Con gave a glimpse of a dystopian future set in a world “taken over by darkness.” “The most exciting thing is in India, we did very few sci-fi films,” Prabhas told Fandom at Comic-Con. Sci-fi films have been made, but few compare to the scale of Kalki 2898 AD. The new movie surpassed RRR to become the biggest-budget film in India, according to Polygon, costing around $75 million.
“We couldn’t afford it because of the budgetary constraint,” Kamal Haasan told Fandom about previous attempts to make sci-fi epic movies in India. But the actor has long been a fan of the genre, listing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner as examples of some favorites.
But Kalki 2898 AD isn’t a traditional sci-fi epic because of how it incorporates Indian mythology. “The script, it’s ancient culture meets sci-fi, it’s very new for the mainstream,” Prabhas said. “Indian mythology is not exposed to the world, so it’s very fresh for the world audience.”
“We have a mythological thread running for thousands of years in India. That’s the beauty of having a culture which is as old as Greece,” Haasan added. “You just have to mention one iconic name and the backstory reveals itself.” That could be the case for this film. Though both actors kept their lips tight about why it’s titled Kalki 2898 AD, Kalki is the tenth and final incarnation of the god Vishnu and we can only guess that the figure will be referenced in the movie.
And with its reveal at Comic-Con, it’s safe to assume that Kalki 2898 AD is looking to make a splash not only India but globally, too. “I only hope that people of India, their energy turns to synergy when it comes to international audience,” Haasan said. “The noise that they make probably will echo in the West as well.”
