More than a decade after Baahubali: The Beginning redefined Indian cinema, a revelation is breaking the internet. The Netflix documentary series, Baahubali: The Torchbearer, premiered on June 26. In the series, the core team talked about their emotional, anxious states on the day of the movie’s release in July 2015. SS Rajamouli, Prabhas, Rama Rajamouli, and SS Karthikeya (Rajamouli’s son) admitted they deeply feared a total rout of the film on its opening day.
The film was made on a huge scale by Shobu Yarlagadda and Prasad Devineni. No one knew if a regional Telugu film could actually bridge national markets back in 2015. On the morning of July 10 that year, anxiety ruled the camp. They genuinely believed everything might crumble. As Karthikeya, who is also co-producing Varanasi, said, the entire Twitter timeline was calling the movie a disaster. “I was crying while scrolling the tweets,” he added.
Initial fears vs. iconic shift
Today, this vulnerability is taking social media users by surprise. Fans, particularly those who are not aware that the Telugu States didn’t receive the epic action drama positively on its opening day, are stunned by the contrast between those initial fears and the historic reality. The franchise eventually birthed the pan-India phenomenon.
Team Baahubali commands respect
Netizens are flooding X and Instagram with emotional messages. One fan wrote that the revelation gives a whole new level of respect to the team. “It’s shocking to learn that the feedback from the ground was that negative in AP and Telangana. I used to believe it was mixed at best. I didn’t know that the reviews in Telugu were unanimously negative, so much so, Rajamouli was inquiring with a distributor as to how the second part could be bailed out,” a fan wrote. Rajamouli’s wife admitted that she was mulling over selling her land in Manikonda, Hyderabad, to make good the losses of the producers, in case the film didn’t click at the box office.
Baahubali: The Conclusion was released two years later. It amassed much bigger figures than the first part.
Also Read: Baahubali: The Eternal War Selected for Cannes of Animation; Prabhas Calls It ‘something special’
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