The new lease of life post ‘Gadar: The Katha Continues’ (2023) he got has Sunny Deol looking at his career differently. He is now picking projects that surprise him and his loyal audience. While the actor is set to play Hanuman in Nitesh Tiwari’s ‘Ramayana’, sources now inform that Namit Malhotra (producer and CEO Double Negative) is fast-tracking a Hanuman-centric musical film, with Deol as the top choice to headline it.

The project, described internally as a “mythological-pop opera with thunderous action”, is rumoured to be the second major entry in the Ramayan Universe (R-Verse). “The moment they saw the initial writing of Hanuman’s sequences in ‘Ramayana’, the team knew he needed his own stage. And Sunny paaji’s name kept coming up because who else could play it better than him, as he is also part of the original,” shares a source close to the development.