SS Rajamouli envisioned expanding the universe of Baahubali while filming the blockbuster films.
S.S Rajamouli revealed at a recent press conference that he had planned during the shoot of Baahubali where he would want to insert a new story.
It goes without saying that SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali films are one of the most successful pan-India films to date. The epic fantasy action films have broken multiple box-office records. Recently, SS Rajamouli attended a promotional event for Baahubali: Crown of Blood, an animated series based on the Baahubali franchise, set to release on Disney Plus Hotstar on May 17. During the event, the veteran director spoke about how he ideated the story of the animated series while he was filming the Prabhas starrer.
At the press conference of Disney+ Hotstar’s upcoming animated series – Baahubali: Crown of Blood, which was held in Hyderabad earlier this week, the visionary filmmaker and creator of the series, S.S. Rajamouli revealed how he had planned where he could insert a new story. Director S.S. Rajamouli said, “Not the entire character but we knew where we could expand the stories. This is not exactly the prequel – this happens right in the middle of the film where we had a chance of splitting the story and inserting sequences or stories where they can continue and constantly be reminded of what happened from the story you know of. This will generate the interest that is going on in the present.”
He continued, “We didn’t create the entire story but we created spaces where we can expand upon. All those things we discussed with Sharad (Devarajan) before starting. We talked about prequels, in between where we can expand the story and post Baahubali what can happen, we talked about different scenarios and picked up the best one.”
During the event, the veteran director spoke about how both parts of Baahubali went on to be a massive success despite minimum spend on promotions. Rajamouli said he wanted to utilise all the money on making the film and spend the minimum on promoting it.
SS Rajamouli explained that his team carefully crafted a publicity campaign that used all the in-house resources, instead of paying for advertisements in traditional media platforms. The RRR director said that the core idea behind any promotional campaign is to examine questions like: “How can I reach the newer audiences and how can I make them come and watch my movie?” and “How can I invest in them?”
The New York Film Critics Circle award-winning director said, “When we said that we spent zero budget on Baahubali, that means yes, we didn’t buy any spots, we didn’t pay any papers and websites to put up the posters or anything like that. But we did a lot of homework for that. We created so many videos. We created digital posters internally. We released the characters. We released the making videos, so we did a lot of things. So a lot of publicity happened but the thing is that we didn’t spend money to do it. We just used our brains and time to do it.”
