The year 2015 forever changed the rules of storytelling and technology in the history of Indian cinema. It was the year Baahubali: The Beginning released across the sub-continent and around the world. As the biggest and the most ambitious film project, that film and its sequel, Baahubali: The Conclusion , shattered expectations by clocking thousands of crores at the box offices across the globe and winning multiple National awards.
For the producers Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni, the project was an all-consuming, high-risk venture. In a chat with MetroPlus , Prasad Devineni, co-producer of Baahubali and a board member of Arka Media Works, shares his views on the making of the films and their future plans.
What made you believe in the project when you started?
We believed in Rajamouli’s vision. It started off as one film. Halfway through the film, we realised that it was becoming a four-hour plus film and, yet, not a single scene could be knocked off. So we decided to either to do it in parts or scrap the project altogether. My partner Shobu Yarlagadda and I decided we should go ahead with it. The budget for the films was way beyond what we had imagined with ₹ 500 crore for both parts. It paid off. Baahubali: The Beginning did ₹ 800 crore business and its sequel has clocked ₹ 2,000 crore.
The film’s part two is doing extremely well in Japan. It has been 120 days and has already garnered a huge fan following. The film released a couple of days ago in China. But the China market is huge and is equally unpredictable. The first part of Baahubali didn’t do great in China. We have to see how the second part does.
Baahubali has been the first film to cross the language barrier by being the highest grosser in the four biggest traditional Indian language markets of Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil.
A friend of mine who works for a leading American entertainment company told me that until 30 minutes into the Hindi version of Baahubali she didn’t realise it was dubbed. That’s how well it was done.
The names of the characters in the film were also Sanskrit ones and did not reflect any Southern region. It was not alien to any particular region or language and that worked for us. Content, of course, is the ultimate king.
How is the Baahubali franchise doing and what are the newer platforms you are targeting?
Baahubali has become a huge franchisee and it will continue. We have the Baahubali comics, merchandise and the animation series coming on Amazon Prime, which also is the most viewed content. But our next ambitious project will be a live action series for the digital space made on a budget of ₹ 300 crore and that will be a prequel to the first film.
It will start off with Sivagami’s childhood and the story will end with the first scene of Baahubali . It will be like the Game of Thrones concept. Rajamouli has given us the vision for it. He didn’t want us to deviate from the basic story and characterisation was important for which he gave his inputs. Developed by Arka Media Works, the series is loosely based on Anand Neelakantan’s book The Rise of Sivagami . That’s the next big thing for us as a production house. The online series will go live across 100 countries by 2019.
Tell me about how you got into film production. Did you have any specific influences growing up that led you towards the film industry?
My biggest influence has been my father. His discipline and hard work were great influences in my life. We travelled across India because of the nature of his job as a senior executive in Indian Oil Corporation.
My mother’s side of the family has a film background. My grandfather is filmmaker and producer KS Prakash Rao and filmmaker-producer K Raghavendra Rao is my maternal uncle. But my father, in fact, discouraged both me and my brother from getting into films. Fortunately, I was successful as a producer.
What were challenges you faced when you started with Baahubali ?
I am not a film buff. For me, everything comes from self belief. For Baahubali , what could have gone wrong, went wrong. When Baahubali: The Beginning released, we were in a deficit of ₹ 70 crore on the day of the release. But we believed in our hard work.
The learning process has been through my own experiences and mistakes. There is no other film that I learnt from.
