A decade ago, Bahubali changed Indian cinema forever. It wasn’t just a film, it coined the word Pan-India and since then every film has been wanting to recreate SS Rajamouli’s magic on the big screen.
The film gave scale, shattered regional boundaries, and introduced Prabhas to the entire country. Now, on the 10th anniversary of this cinematic juggernaut, the team is reuniting to release Baahubali: The Epic, a specially edited 3. 5-hour version of both parts, reimagined for the big screen.
At the center of this legacy stands
Shobu Yarlagadda, the producer who helped bring S. S. Rajamouli’s vision of life. He stated that the idea to put together two films and make them into one was attempted in 2018-2019 , he said, “We actually tried something like this around 2018–19, it was just an edit. We combined both the films to see how it would look, but everyone got busy with different projects, and we dropped it. ”
But for the 10th anniversary he wanted to do something special and thus they began working on the film once again, so he and his team got talking to SS Rajamouli and he suggested ‘Why don’t we actually combine both into one and try it out?’ . Shobhu also revealed that it is Rajamouli who is personally editing the film, he said, “ It’s completely his vision.
Since March or April, he’s been editing it. It’s gone through multiple versions and the final cut was locked just a few days ago”.
When Baahubali: The Epic was announced, it was reported that the film would have a run time of more than 5 hours but now the run time of the film is about 3.5 hours.When asked how did the run time reduce this drastically, Shobu said, “No, no, it was never going to be five hours,we hadn’t announced the runtime because the edit wasn’t finalized.
People just added both runtimes together and assumed. ” He also states that some scenes and songs have been eliminated in service of storytelling, he states “Some scenes and songs have been removed completely. There will be less screen time for some characters. But the flow is so seamless that I don’t think anyone will have complaints. Maybe a slight disappointment, but no complaints. ”
He also revealed that at the scripting stage itself back in 2011-2012 they knew that the film would be made in two parts.
He says “When we first heard the full narration in 2012, we realized it couldn’t fit into a standard format. The story was too emotional, too vast. By the end of 2012, we ( Rajamouli, writer Dr Vijendra Prasad and the producers) decided to split it into two parts. We started shooting in 2013. ”
Shobu also revealed that as a producer his journey could be split into two parts pre 2015 and post 2015, Baahubali- The Beginning released in 2015.
He said , “ As producers, both periods were completely different. The period of 2013 to 2015 was definitely very, very stressful.. We all were stretching beyond everything we had done. But once the film released it was a success in Hindi, till then, there was no pan India market and Hindi was not a market existing market but Baahubali proved that there is a market. After that we were very relieved . So from 2015 to 2017 there was still some deficit to be covered with the second part but we knew that monetarily we were not at any risk. ”
Bahubali featured names like Prabhas,
Rana Daggubati, Tamannaah Bhatia, Anushka Shetty, Ramya Krishnan and Sathyaraj.
