Allu Arjun's big pan-India film with Atlee just picked up two more years of wait time. According to a report from Filmibeat Tamil, Raaka's shoot will now stretch into 2027, and the film itself is unlikely to hit screens before 2028.

That is a fair bit later than what was being pencilled in until recently. The earlier plan, per the same report, had photography wrapping this year with a 2027 release. Whatever is holding things up on set has apparently pushed both dates back by a year, though the report does not specify what exactly is causing the slippage.

Sun Pictures is bankrolling Raaka, and by most accounts the budget is enormous even by pan-India standards. The cast list reads like a wishlist. Deepika Padukone, Rashmika Mandanna, Mrunal Thakur and Janhvi Kapoor are all attached alongside Allu Arjun, and some of the technical work is reportedly being handled by crew flown in from Hollywood.

For Atlee, this is his second Hindi-facing production after Jawan, the Shah Rukh Khan film that crossed the Rs 1,000-crore mark and turned him into one of the busiest names in Indian cinema overnight. He started out directing Vijay almost exclusively in Tamil, from his debut Raja Rani onward, and barring Bigil, every one of those films opened big or went on to become a blockbuster. The knock on him, fair or not, has always been that his stories borrow heavily from elsewhere. What keeps him in demand anyway is the craft. Rich frames, glossy production value, the sense that whatever he is remaking will still look expensive doing it.

That reputation is exactly why Raaka carries so much weight before a single trailer has even dropped. Fans across the Telugu and Tamil belts are already calling it a lock for the Rs 1,000-crore club, going purely on the Jawan template and the scale of the cast Atlee has built around Allu Arjun.

A two-year runway is not unusual for a production this size, especially one juggling international crews and five separate star schedules. But it does mean anyone hoping to see Raaka land before Allu Arjun's other pending commitments wrap up will need to recalibrate.

Neither Sun Pictures nor Atlee's team has put out an official word on the timeline yet. Until they do, 2028 remains the number doing the rounds, not a confirmed release date.