The Biggest Movie I’ve Ever Done in My Career”: A.R. Rahman Spills on Nitesh Tiwari’s ‘Ramayana’ & Legendary Hans Zimmer Collaboration

The global anticipation surrounding director Nitesh Tiwari’s magnum opus ‘Ramayana: Rise of a Legend’ has reached a monumental peak, and Oscar-winning music maestro A.R. Rahman has offered an exclusive glimpse into what promises to be the largest musical undertaking of his legendary career. Backed by producer Namit Malhotra and featuring a stellar star cast led by Ranbir Kapoor as Lord Ram, Sai Pallavi as Sita, and Yash as Ravana, the cinematic spectacle brings together two musical powerhouses: A.R. Rahman and Hollywood visionary Hans Zimmer.

Reflecting on the sheer ambition and global scale of the project, Rahman admitted that despite three decades of iconic compositions, Ramayana stands in a league of its own. "This is the most exciting project I’ve ever worked on. I've never done such a big movie ever in my life," Rahman shared. Having spent nearly three and a half years crafting the sonic identity of the epic, the maestro revealed that almost 70 percent of the soundtrack album—including the widely celebrated anthem ‘Jai Jai Ram’—has already premiered to resounding global acclaim, with further musical surprises planned leading up to its theatrical bow.

A major highlight of the film’s score is Rahman’s long-awaited, historic collaboration with Hans Zimmer. Building on a personal friendship that dates back to 2009, the duo joined forces across studios in London, Los Angeles, and Abu Dhabi to weave traditional Indian classical motifs with sweeping Western orchestration. The creative process was as grueling as it was rewarding, often requiring up to 13 different iterations for a single piece to achieve absolute perfection.

The final phase of production demanded an exhausting regimen, with Rahman traveling across five major cities—Los Angeles, London, Budapest, Mumbai, and Chennai—while sleeping barely three to four hours a night to score the film across multiple languages and visual effects cuts. Rather than viewing the vast CG demands as an obstacle, Rahman chose to fully immerse himself to streamline the creative vision.

Expressing immense pride in taking India’s cultural heritage to a global audience—with Sony distributing the cinematic epic across an unprecedented 70,000 screens worldwide—Rahman promises that concertgoers on his upcoming Wonderment tour in Mumbai and New Delhi will get to experience the live soundscape of Ramayana. Summing up the musical universe of the film in one simple word, the maestro smiled and promised: "Epic. Really epic."