An epic battle movie likened to US blockbuster 300 is set to become India’s most expensive film ever, but it is a lesser-known industry, not Bollywood, that will smash the record.
The two-part Baahubali, costing still a fraction of the cost of Hollywood blockbusters, is being made in the Telugu and Tamil languages for the so-called “Tollywood” and “Kollywood” markets respectively.
Its release shines a welcome spotlight on southern India’s lesser-known film industries, which are often overshadowed by the glitz and glamor of the country’s internationally bankable Hindi-language Bollywood films.
Director S.S. Rajamouli said the movie, which eager cinemagoers are also comparing to Hercules, is set to break the previous big-budget Indian film by US$17 million.
“There are still over a hundred days of shooting left, followed by post-production for the second part. The budget will definitely be over 250 crore rupees [US$40 million] for both parts,” Rajamouli told reporters.
Baahubali, literally meaning “the one with strong arms,” is laden with special effects and tells the fictional story of two warring brothers battling for control of an ancient Indian kingdom.
The opening part of the ambitious spectacle, Baahubali — The Beginning, is due for release in India on July 10, with the final installment scheduled to hit screens next year.
Indian cinema produces films in 39 languages and dialects. Last year, 216 Hindi or Bollywood movies were released, fewer than the 287 in Tamil and 255 Telugu-language films.
Bollywood — centered in the western city of Mumbai — is India’s biggest-grossing movie industry, accounting for US$565 million in box office revenues in 2013, according to auditing firm Deloitte.
However, Tollywood and Kollywood were not far behind, raising a total of US$468 million and, despite their relative anonymity abroad, have form when it comes to releasing big-budget blockbusters.
Baahubali will overtake the 2010 Tamil movie Enthiran (Robot), which cost an estimated 1.5 billion rupees to make, as Indian cinema’s most costly film so far.
Movie critics and fans who have watched a short teaser released last month say its vast battle scenes draw comparisons with 2006 hit movie 300, which starred Gerard Butler.
“It’s the simple story of a father who has been back-stabbed, a mother who has been enchained for no wrong of hers and the story of a son who takes revenge. The two parts span two generations,” Rajamouli said.
There was nothing simple about the 42-year-old filmmaker’s ambitions for the project, with one battle scene taking four months to shoot. It constitutes about 20 minutes of the film.
“It was challenging to get 1,000 soldiers into costume, with weapons and onto the location,” said Rajamouli, whose previous hits include Magadheera (Great Warrior) and Eega (Fly).
“We worked with 2,000 extras and about 500-600 technicians, horses, elephants and equipment. It was quite a task, but we managed,” the Hyderabad-based director said on a recent visit to Mumbai.
About 600 artists from 17 visual effects studios in India, South Korea and China have been involved in creating the film’s 4,500 visual effects and computer graphics.
Shobu Yarlagadda, CEO of Arka Mediaworks and producer of Baahubali, said it was a calculated decision to release the film in two parts to help recoup production costs.
“We would not have been able to recover the cost even if it had been a single film because the storyline would not have allowed us to make it under three hours long,” he said. “So we decided to increase the budget some more and make it in two parts and in two languages, Tamil and Telugu, which are our main markets, to make it more viable.”
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS