Indian studio Sagar Pictures Entertainment‘s seven-part theatrical franchise adapted from the “Bhagavata Mahapurana” will kick off with “Shrimad Bhagavatam Part I: Vishnurata.”
The first teaser poster has been unveiled. The film is scheduled for a global theatrical release in 2027.
Vishnurata translates to “the one always protected by Vishnu,” a name traditionally associated with King Parikshit in the “Bhagavata Mahapurana.” The title establishes the spiritual foundation of the franchise, which centers on Lord Shri Krishna and depicts what the studio describes as an expansive spiritual universe built around devotion, dharma and the bond between humanity and the divine.
The project comes from Sagar Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind “Ramayan” (1987), the television adaptation of the “Ramayana” epic that reached a generation of Indian viewers. Akash Sagar Chopra and Amrit Sagar Chopra co-direct “Shrimad Bhagavatam Part I: Vishnurata,” serving respectively as SPE’s CEO and senior vice president of content. The brothers are grandsons of the late filmmaker and producer Ramanand Sagar.
Akash Sagar Chopra and Amrit Sagar Chopra said, “As both brothers and co-directors of this film, we grew up with the stories of the ‘Bhagavatam.’ For millions of Indians, we believe these stories exist not only as spiritual knowledge, but as part of our civilizational memory. Our grandfather brought the ‘Ramayana’ to the screen, and it became a defining medium through which a generation experienced the epic. But we cannot recreate what he did, nor would we try. Every generation must discover its own cinematic language, shaped by the medium and possibilities of its time.”
They said it took six years of studying the “Bhagavatam” before they felt prepared to put it on screen, and that the process convinced them Part I needed a different treatment than a standard film. “The scale and imagination of the text demanded a vast cinematic canvas,” they said.
Production on the film is nearing completion. The studio says it is combining expansive production design and visual craft drawn from devotional paintings, sculptures and sacred imagery audiences already recognize, aiming for a scale it describes as unprecedented for the genre.
“Across centuries, the divine has taken form in our paintings, sculptures and sacred imagery,” Akash Sagar Chopra and Amrit Sagar Chopra said. “We wanted to remain true to the images we have grown up seeing, recognizing and praying to – not reinventing them for the sake of reinvention, but bringing them to life with the realism, authenticity and scale that cinema today makes possible. Our attempt with ‘Vishnurata’ is to bring that familiar and sacred visual memory to life and to allow audiences to experience the ‘Bhagavata Mahapurana’ on the largest cinematic canvas possible.”
SPE will bring “Shrimad Bhagavatam Part I: Vishnurata” to theaters globally in every major premium format during 2027, with further details on Part I expected later, the studio said.
Sagar Pictures Entertainment operates as the film unit of the Sagar Pix Group, an Indian media conglomerate active in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad whose storytelling roots go back more than 75 years. Its wider body of work spans more than 55 television series and 25-feature films, reaching viewers from South Asia and the Middle East to North Africa and India, as well as the global Indian diaspora, and includes Indian National Film Award-winning titles and ITA Award-winning television programming.
