Hrithik Roshan reveals how The Lord of the Rings inspired Krrish: ‘My father saw it and felt why can’t we do it in India’

Actor Hrithik Roshan on Thursday revealed that the origin of his blockbuster superhero franchise Krrish actually has roots in the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings. Hrithik said the idea to turn his hit film Koi… Mil Gaya into a franchise came after his filmmaker father Rakesh Roshan binge watched The Lord of the Rings.
Hrithik said his father, who has directed all three films in the Krrish franchise, wanted to expand on an idea and build an entire universe, much like what author JRR Tolkien had done with his books.
During a special event ahead of the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime Video, Hrithik Roshan opened up about the origin story of his beloved Krrish franchise.
“There’s a little connection between me and the Lord of the Rings, which I don’t think anyone knows. One random day back in 2004, my dad watched The Lord of the Rings part one. He couldn’t stop so he watched part two, and then he saw part three. He gave me a call.
“And he was talking about how they used this one idea and expanded on it. He said, ‘Why can’t we do that?’ So I asked, ‘Okay, but what do you want to do?’ So he said, ‘Why can’t we take Koi Mil Gaya, one of our previous films, and build on that?’ And that was the birth of Krrish. So if there was no Lord of the Rings, there wouldn’t have been any Krrish,” the actor said.

At the event, he was joined actor Tamannaah Bhatia and creator JD Payne, along with the series cast, including actors Rob Aramayo, Maxim Baldry, Markella Kavenagh, Charles Edwards, Lloyd Owen, Megan Richards, Nazanin Boniadi, Ema Horvath, Tyroe Muhafidin and Sara Zwangobani.
Payne, who is billed as a showrunner and executive producer along with Patrick McKay, said he is aware that The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power comes with huge expectations as JRR Tolkien’s work enjoys a loyal fandom. The creator said the team’s challenge was to capture the essence of Tolkien’s world and present it onscreen.
“There’s darkness in our world, so many people are in pain. There’s political darkness, economic darkness, social darkness, just a lot of challenges. But Middle Earth speaks to people in their soul. This is the reason that Tolkien’s work has been one of the best-selling works of all time.
“No matter what country people come from, the background they have, Tolkien’s work goes past everything and strikes a chord with people,” JD Payne added.
According to the official synopsis, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth’s hory. The epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.

JD Payne said the team had to build a world from what JRR Tolkien had “sketched out” and was touched when fans of the author reacted positively to the series, scheduled to release on September 2.
“Tolkien sketched the Second Age out but didn’t go into tons of details in a lot of parts. So we had to very carefully excavate what he had shown and also connect the dots and fill the gaps. We showed some Tolkien super fans about 20 minute of the show and one of them said, ‘It just feels like middle earth’ and I spontaneously broke into tears because that’s what I wanted to achieve,” Payne concluded.