9th July 2015 – This is the date that marked the arrival of Baahubali: The Beginning, the film which changed the way in which audiences watched Indian films. A truly landmark affair that went on to be a critical as well as commercial success, it also led the way for the sequel, Baahubali: The Conclusion, which is now officially the highest grosser of all times. As the film celebrates its 5 years of release, here are 10 interesting facts about the S.S. Rajamouli directed epic drama.
– Karan Johar came on board to present the Hindi version of the film. This was seen as a massive development since it was for the first time ever that a top Indian producer stepped in to present a film that was an out and out South affair with no mainstream Bollywood actor featuring in there.
– While filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli had quite a few blockbusters behind him when he started work on Baahubali series, he had also started becoming a household name for pan-India audience, courtesy dubbed versions of his Eega, Magadheera and Vikramarkudu already been quite popular.
– S.S. Rajamouli wanted to make sure that visually and technically, Baahubali was going to be the greatest of all times. Hence, he didn’t spare any expenses in VFX, cinematography, sets, locations, sound design etc. As a result, the film’s budget was one of the biggest ever for an Indian film as it came close to a massive 200 crores.
– Recovery of such a massive investment was going to be the key and hence the film was one of the biggest pan-India release. Other than the native Telugu language (as well as Tamil) in which it was made, since it was a bilingual, the film was also released at record count of screens for its Hindi and Malayalam versions
– The film was loosely inspired by the epic Mahabharata with the characters played by Prabhas and Rana Daggubati inspired by Yudhishthir and Duryodhana respectively. The core of the film was about the battle of thrones and who was the rightful heir of that
– Though the film wasn’t quite a mythical affair, the introductory song of Tamannah ‘Khoya Hain’, had a fantasy set up to it. In fact that gave an impression that Baahubali: The Beginning may be a part-fantasy, part-real film but that was not the case to be as the mystical element stayed relegated only to this song, hence giving it a magical appeal
– For the first time ever in the history of Indian filmmaking, Baahubali: The Beginning came to a close with a cliffhanger where Katappa [Sathyaraja] killed Baahubali [Prabhas]. This resulted in the entire marketing campaign of Baahubali: The Conclusion hanging on a single thread – ‘Kattappa ne Baahubali ko kyun maara?’, which spread like wildfire
– In its Hindi version, Baahubali: The Beginning saw a good opening of 5.15 crores. Though it may seem low when compared to other Hindi biggies of similar scale and size, this was quite good for a dubbed version as even Rajinikanth’s Robot, which had released five years back in 2010, could take a start of just 2 crore. In comparison, this was a very good number.
– The film saw very good word of mouth coming its way as from the first day of 5.15 crores, the collections soared to 22 crores over the weekend, a jump of over four times. Post that there was further stability demonstrated as the film more than doubled its weekend in the entire first week run which stood at a very good 45 crores.
– Baahubali: The Beginning is the only film so far which has actually managed to enter the 100 Crore Club despite a start of just 5.15 crores. Typically, a film that goes on to hit a century takes a start of at least 10 crores (there has only been an exception or two). However, to go from 5.15 crores to as much as 117 crores has been a never-seen-before phenomenon.