Sakshi Tanwar will play the role of Mother of Dragons.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: With “Game of Thrones’ ” fifth season on the verge of simultaneously premiering across to audiences across the globe, a report has revealed Sony Entertainment is remaking the megahit fantasy series for Indian television with Sakshi Tanwar taking up the mantle of Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons.
The new production will be titled “Rani Mahal,” and as with the HBO series on which it’s based, will draw heavily from George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” books.
According to Dramatize Blog, “Rani Mahal” will take place in 1857, which was the year of the Indian Rebellion against the East India Tea Company. The setting suggests the South Asian iteration of Martin’s opus may involve historical as well as fantastical elements. It should also be noted that Rani Mahal is the name of a royal palace in the city of Jhansi that was damaged by British bombardment during the 1857 rebellion.
In addition to finding their Daenerys in Sakshi Tanwar, who rose to fame with Ekta Kapoor’s “Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki,” the Indian series has cast Parth Samthaan and Anita Hassanandani as Jon Snow and Cersei Lannister, respectively.
While it will be difficult for “Rani Mahal” to match the production value of HBO’s series, which operates on a massive budget averaging $6 million per episode, Dramatize reported the newcomer to Indian television will still be one of the “most expensive daily soaps on the small screen.”
Despite being off to a running start, one of the highest hurdles Sony will inevitably have to overcome is the extensive reach of institutional censorship in India. “Game of Thrones” is renowned for its portrayals of both feudal violence and nudity.
“Game of Thrones” premiered in the United States on April 17, 2011. In its four seasons on the air, the fantasy drama has attracted record numbers of viewers and amassed an exceptionally diverse and active fan base around the world.
5 Comments
WTF! Please don’t do that!! I hate you guys for even thinking of remaking it in Hindi! What will it be? some other saas-bahu shit? Its going to be Terrrrible!
Wow this is gonna be such a disaster… but I honestly can’t wait to see how bad it’ll be. Those of you in India, if you wanna watch Game of Thrones, watch the real one; don’t wait for this sanitized, overacted melodrama to ruin it for you.
It’s kind of dumb to include historical elements when trying to emulate a fantasy epic like Game of Thrones. Were the Indian producers too nearsighted to recognize that India has its own tradition of fantasy-storytelling and mythology?
You’d better tell that to George R. R. Martin. Most of this stuff is lifted out of British history by his own admission. Including the red wedding.
But Martin’s books are set in Westeros NOT Britain. Even if some events were borrowed from British history, they are not taking place in Britain. Likewise, Jonathan Swift borrowed satirized so much from history in Gulliver’s Travels, and yet Lilliput, Brobdingnag, etc were still fictional places. It’s dumb to set Rani Mahal in an actual historical setting, because that real time and place were not mythological, and that obviously constrains the amount of fantasy elements to a minimum.