NEW DELHI: ‘Ramayana – The epic’, Ketan Mehta’s animation feature film directed by debutante director Chetan Desai, will be released in north America and Canada early next year.

The film, distributed in India by Warner Brothers, was released to coincide with Dussehra with over 250 prints in Hindi along with Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Marathi versions.

The Hindi version of ‘Ramayana - The Epic’ has Manoj Bajpai, Juhi Chawla and Ashutosh Rana lending their voices to the lead characters of Ram, Sita and Ravan respectively.

A Maya Digital Media production, Ramayana - The Epic is one of the most ambitious and expensive full length 3D animation feature films made in India, according to associate producer and international consultant, Bhuvan Lall.

Lall told indiantelevision.com that “after opening the film in India we are now looking at a global release for the film in early 2011 specially focusing in North America since it had a lot of interest among the buyers at the Toronto Film Festival 2010.”

’Ramayana - The Epic’ is a spectacular audio visual experience far beyond anything ever attempted in India with skills and designs matching international standards of Computer animation and Digital Visual effects, he claimed.

“The two-hour long film is completely at par with international animation, and we are planning to release the film in English as well as several European languages as well,” he added.