A Hindi Version of ‘Marvel’s Wastelanders: Star-Lord’ Brings Together Saif Ali Khan, Vrajesh Hirjee and Sushant Divgikr

While he’s had plenty of experience creating fictional and non-fictional audio stories over the years, Mantra Mugdh’s MnM Talkies got a pretty succinct brief when it came to making a Hindi version of Marvel’s Wastelanders: Star-Lord for Audible.

The story surrounding Guardians of the Galaxy movie and comic book characters including Peter Quill (now voiced by Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan) and Rocket (voiced by seasoned actor Vrajesh Hirjee) has been adapted into multiple languages. The writing credits go to Marvel and author Benjamin Percy, but Mantra and his team were handed “the mammoth task” of localizing the franchise. “One has to be clinically precise when it comes to a franchise such as Marvel. And to bring alive such legendary characters has been a thrilling experience,” Mantra says.

While MnM Talkies has delved into the comic book adaptation realm before – they put out Batman Ek Chakravyuh with Spotify and Warner Bros. in 2022 – this one involved following the story to the T. Still, drawing within the lines, Marvel’s Wastelanders: Star-Lord has gems like “Yeh Earth nahi, anarth hai (This isn’t Earth, this is a disaster).”

Mantra’s involvement as director was announced in February this year, along with the cast that included Khan as Peter Quill, Hirjee as Rocket, Sushant Divgikr as Cora, Anangsha Biswas as The Collector, Maninee De as Emma Frost and Harjeet Walia as Kraven the Hunter. Mantra says about the lineup, “Casting for this series has been a huge process. Audible knew what they wanted and most casting has been done by them. We made suggestions on who we thought would fit the character and Vrajesh Hirjee was one such suggestion. I am a big fan of his work and I knew if anyone can pull off a Mumbaiya Rocket it was him,” the director says.

The story sees Star-Lord and Rocket in a post-apocalyptic situation, one where the original Avengers are all gone and the Marvel supervillains have taken over. “The plot and writing for audio is certainly very interesting. There are no visuals attached to it so the listeners are free to let their imagination run wild just based on the power of sound and powerful performances,” Mantra adds.

MnM Talkies has already rolled out another original audio series with season two of Virus 2062 starring the voices of actors Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal within a week of their Marvel outing, which is part of Mantra’s vision for the future of audio shows. “I would like to see actors, writers and creators to look at audio medium not as an add-on to their work profile, but as a specialized skill set. The medium deserves more respect than it currently receives,” he says.