Yash talked about playing Ravana in Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming two-part Ramayana at San Diego Comic-Con earlier this month, and used the appearance to outline exactly how he sees the character. “You have to have good and bad, good and evil to tell a story,” he told the crowd, putting the ancient epic in the same way it’s been read for centuries: Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, vs. Ravana, the demon king of Lanka.
Yash spent most of his time on stage explaining the second half of that pairing, and he did it with an actual thesis. “Rama,” he said, “is a king by birth who has to lose all before he can regain his power by his own choices. Ravana does the opposite: he starts with nothing, gains real power, and somewhere along the way loses himself. In Yash’s words, “When you fight a demon, you become a bigger demon”. That’s an ambitious way to frame a movie villain, more thesis than pitch, at a convention made for costume reveals and trailer drops.
That line does more heavy lifting than most trailers do.
This isn’t new ground for him personally either. Yash says the Ramayana was probably the first story he ever heard, passed down by his grandfather who used to tell him the tales as a kid and let him fill in the rest with his own imagination. A story that is handed down like that, with one generation filling holes for the next, tends to stick with an actor differently than a script you pick up cold. That early, casual exposure is evident in the way he talks about building the role now. He says he never attempted to recreate Ravana. Instead, he asked two questions: what he could bring to the part as an actor, what he actually understood about the character.
No spin. No rewrite. Just motive.
Yash says, “Nitesh Tiwari and the writers of the film refined that understanding. They helped me understand what made Ravana do what he did. He says the motivation behind the character’s actions was more important to him than anything else in the performance.
Tiwari has separately filled in more of that picture at the film’s teaser launch in Los Angeles. His Ravana is not only about rage. Tiwari speaks about the character’s devotion to Lord Shiva, his musical prowess and record as a ruler, all sitting alongside the ego and anger that ultimately bring him down. It’s a conscious shift from the way these adaptations usually market their baddies, all snarl and no shading. Whether the resulting film lives up to that balance is another question, but the pitch itself sounds like more than marketing speak.
The Ramayana in Two Parts
The production is scaled to that ambition. Ramayana is being released in two parts. The first part is releasing for Diwali 2026, and the second part will be releasing after a full year for Diwali 2027. The combined runtime was said to be about six hours.
Six hours to reason out, not condone, a demon king.
Yash is not just playing the role. He is producing the film through his banner Monster Mind Creations, which puts him on both sides of the camera for a character he’s been thinking about for years. When asked separately why a story this old still connects with new audiences, he came up with an answer that turns his Ravana thesis back on the viewer: “You have both good and bad inside you.” It’s the same argument, but turned inward, not at the character.
Comic-Con, CinemaCon and the One Number We Still Haven’t Seen
There are a few things to keep in mind regarding this press run. And Yash’s comments on the contrast between Rama and Ravana are specifically from San Diego Comic Con. That same larger promotional cycle also included a stop at CinemaCon in Los Angeles back in April, and some clips from that portion of the interviews are loosely attributed across both events online. These are two different conversations on two different dates, and to merge them into one appearance would misrepresent the story.
And there’s a number doing the rounds that needs a caveat before it goes further. It is being said that Yash charges at least 100 crore for the trilogy. This figure is derived from online fan and community discussions, rather than from any official source associated with the production. To date, no actual contract number has been verified to be close to this amount. Don’t take it as fact until someone involved with the film says so; treat it as a rumour.
The piece has what is in fact confirmed on its own. A producer-actor who grew up on these stories. A director talking about devotion and musical talent rather than just villainy. And six hours of runtime spread across two Diwalis to make the point. That’s a lot of runway to fill with one performance, and a lot of room for the argument to fall apart if the writing doesn’t do its part. “I am not trying to reinvent Ravana,” says Yash. And with all the screen time the film is giving him to make his case, he may not need to.
