MUMBAI: Maya Entertainment is in talks with Warner Brothers to release its 3-D animation film, Ramayana - The Epic. Directed by Chetan Desai, the film is expected to hit theatres during the Dussera festival this year.

Juhi Chawla, Manoj Bajpayi and Ashutosh Rana have lent their voice for the characters of Sita, Ram and Raavan respectively. Popular villain Mukesh Rishi will be dubbing for the character of Hanuman.

For these actors dubbing for animated characters is a first. While Ashutosh and Manoj found motion picture dubbing far more challenging, Chawla feels it was a kind of a challenge to dub for the much-reverred Sita. She admits that it was tough emoting for a character that exists as a sketch.

Manoj and Ashutosh said while dubbing for a film one has to recreate the expressions that one had on the set and match the lip movement accordingly but for an animated film one had the freedom to imagine and the graphics would be tweaked to suit the actor‘s dialogue delivery.

The first theatrical trailor is expected to be launched with the release of Dabangg and We Are Family.

Says Chetan Desai, "The last animated version of Ramayana, released a decade ago, was in 2D. Our film has lot of challenging shots. There are over fifty thousand characters in one shot and we have done an action scene in rain as well."