For years, the secrecy surrounding it — and, of course, its scale and star power — has ensured that the interest around Brahmastra, even though many a release date has come and gone, has never abated. After all, Brahmastra ticks off many boxes. A cast comprising Amitabh Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, all coming together for the first time.

A capable young director in Ayan Mukerji who has credible films like Wake Up Sid and Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani to his name. The fact that Ranbir hasn’t had a release in the three years after Sanju (though Yash Raj Films’ Shamshera arrives in March, a good six months before Brahmastra). Add to that a lot of industry chatter that Brahmastra boasts of some of the best visual effects ever in Bollywood and is Ayan’s attempt to create a fantasy franchise. That this multi-starrer, big-budget film is the first in a trilogy has already been announced.

Bramhastra has been in the ideation, and in the making stage, for quite some time now. Even before the pandemic hit and brought the world to a pause, the film had announced a release date or two, and had even innovatively unveiled its logo — Ranbir, Alia and Ayan in attendance — at the Kumbh Mela in 2019. Not much has come out about the film since.

Barring earlier this week , when The Telegraph found itself in attendance at the sprawling premises of Maison PVR in Mumbai. This was for Team Brahmastra, represented by Ayan Mukerji, to unveil key assets of the film, including its motion poster, and also talk about what has been a part of Ayan’s life over the last decade.

“The idea for Brahmastra — which was no more than a series of images in my mind — came to me when I was trekking somewhere in the Himalayas in 2011,” said Ayan, shortly after unveiling the motion poster. And what a winner of a motion poster it is. Playing out at over a little over a minute, the motion poster is an amalgamation of fire and earth brought together by some spectacular VFX, and reveals Ranbir Kapoor as a modern-day superhero of sorts whose name is Shiv. The motion poster also features the voice of Alia Bhatt as Isha. What caught our eye was the word ‘Astraverse’ — hinting at a cinematic universe — at the end of the motion poster.

Ayan has lived with Brahmastra for 10 years and has shot it over the last three years, with schedules in Bulgaria, London, New York, Edinburgh and Varanasi, to name a few. Since he first started writing it, the young film-maker has also given us Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani in 2013, a blockbuster hit which has also become a pop-culture phenomenon. But Brahmastra, well and truly, is Ayan’s test as a film-maker.

“I have been fascinated by fantasy... the worlds of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings have always interested me. Brahmastra is a truly original idea, something that is born out of deeply rooted concepts in Indian mythology using cutting-edge technology,” said Ayan. In a special segment screened after the unveiling of the motion poster, Amitabh Bachchan described the genre of the film as “modern mythology”, given that it is set in the modern-day world.

Brahmastra: Part One will tell the story of Shiv, played by Ranbir, who realises he has a superhero power within him which will change the course of his life. We will know more on September 9, 2022 when the film hits the big screen.