Lambodhara 2.0 casts a real humanoid robot named JIA as a character

The film's most unusual cast member was introduced publicly in the first days of October 2026. Simple Suni posted on Instagram that JIA is the actor, and outlets including OdishaTV and CineBuster then carried the news. Its maker is Machani Robotics, based in Bengaluru. The makers state that what appears on screen is the physical machine, not computer graphics and not a performer in a suit, and they describe it as the first real humanoid robot to play a character in an Indian film. That is the makers' claim, repeated by the outlets, and we have not independently checked it.

The idea first surfaced a little earlier. Asianet Suvarna's interview coverage of 23 September had Suni saying the robot's character appears through the whole film and that the crew fed it prompts to steer each scene. A week later the filming wrap reports repeated the point, so the timeline runs from a late-September interview, to the wrap on 30 September, to the formal announcement in early October, and then the 12 October release-date news.

Beyond the robot, the cast line-up these reports use is Anil Shetty, Kunal Kapoor, Saachi Bindra and Meghana Gaonkar. The story is pitched as a happiness-hunting thriller set in the digital age.