Rana Daggubati's 'Haathi Mere Saathi': Everything you need to know about the movie

Rana Daggubati is ready for his third Bollywood outing after his stint in Baahubali and The Ghazi Attack with Haathi Mere Saathi. The film starring Rana Daggubati and Shriya Pilgaonkar in the lead will be released in three languages - Haathi Mere Saathi in Hindi, Kaadan in Tamil and Aranya in Telugu. With the release of the trilingual film just around the corner, here is everything we know about Rana Daggubati's Haathi Mere Saathi.

Story plot

The plot of the movie revolves around the story of a jungle man who fights against deforestation and trying to help the elephants from losing their homes and getting killed for ivory at the hands of poachers due to illegal hunting.

Cast change in the movie

While the Rana Daggubati's Kaadan and Aranya, the Tamil and Telugu versions of the movie has actor Vishnu Vishal play the character of Singa an elephant rider and Bandev's (Rana Daggubati) friend. He was replaced in the Hindi version Haathi Mere Saathi with actor Pulkit Samrat who will be playing the same role as Abeer.

Other than that, the movie had initially announced that Kalki Koechlin will be playing the female leading lady in the film however she was later replaced by Shriya Pilgaonkar to play the role of a journalist in the movie.

Change in release dates

While Kaadan and Aranya are scheduled to release tomorrow on Friday, March 26, Rana Daggubati's Haathi Mere Saathi release date has been postponed owing to the spike in Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra. The new release date of Haathi Mere Saathi has not been updated yet.

Rana Daggubati underwent a major physical transformation for the movie

In an interview with Deccan Chronicle, Rana admitted that he had to shed off 30 kilos for his role as Rana in the jungle-themed flick. Rana who had a huge built-up body as Bhallaldev for Baahubali said that the director Prabhu Solomon had a clear idea about Bandev and told Rana that a man who has lived in the jungle all his life has no access to the Gym and can never have a beefed-up body like this. He asked Rana to lose some weight and grow his hair and beard for 6 months in order to get his look right.

The actors shared their experiences of shooting in a jungle

In the same interview, Rana recounted his experience working with his co-stars the elephants and said that the ground would start shaking when all the eighteen elephants would move at once on set. Shriya Pilgaonkar also recalled that she would get the Telugu and Tamil script of the movie just 2-3 minutes before filming and she never actually got to learn the language in depth. They also shared that as the film was shot in the dense forests of Kerala, they had no access to network and internet for days making the entire filming experience very authentic.

The trailer of the film garnered a lot of positive responses from the audience. With Kaadan and Aranya releasing tomorrow, the netizens are patiently waiting for an update on the release date of Haathi Mere Saathi.

(Promo Image Courtesy: Rana Daggubati Instagram)