SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali – The Beginning was certainly 2015’s biggest blockbuster and grossed over Rs 600 crore worldwide and also holds the accolade of being the the first dubbed Hindi film to gross over Rs 100 crore as well.
But, there is already a great buzz around Baahubali 2 – The Conclusion, the sequel to Baahubali -The Begining. At the Busan Film Festival, SS Rajamouli revealed: “We have already shot 40 per cent of Baahubali: The Conclusion but haven’t yet started on the rest because the team took some time to celebrate success of part 1. The sequel will start rolling by end November at the film’s standing sets in Hyderabad’s Ramoji Film City and some forest sequences will shoot in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.”
He added, “We realise that the commercial success of part one was due to the visual effects and the war scenes. And I know people will be expecting more from the second part. I don’t want to disappoint the audiences. It will be much bigger.”
An international version of the film, edited by Vincent Tabaillion, was screened in the festival circuits, where it got rave reviews and new buyers. Baahubali – The Beginning is likely to release in China for the Chinese New Year in February 2016. The other international market where the film will release later this year or early 2016 are Taiwan, Germany, Japan, Korea, Spain, and the first Indian film which will have a Latin America release.
The producer of the film Shobu Yarlagadda of Arka Media recently revealed that the VFX and special effects for the sequel is going to be scaled up from the earlier feature, which will lead to a delay in the schedule of the release till the end of 2016. The VFX is once again being handled by multiple studios while the lead studio executing the major work is Makuta VFX.
AnimationXpress.com had earlier broken the news about Srinivas Mohan, who supervised VFX effects in part 1, being replaced by Kamal Kannan, noted VFX supervisor who was involved in Rajamouli’s earlier Eega (Makhi in Hindi).
Yarlagadda also revealed that Baahubali 1 and 2 was to be made on a budget of $40 million, but after scaling up the production it is likely to touch the $50 million mark as expectations are huge for the sequel. He also maintained that contrary to rumours there are no new additions to the original star cast. India release of Baahubali 2 will happen only end 2016; the exact date and month are still being worked out.
