Hyderabad: ‘Baahubali’ is celebrated as one of the biggest blockbusters in Indian cinema, but director SS Rajamouli has revealed that the film’s journey was far from smooth.
Looking back, the filmmaker recalled that the ambitious project was once labelled ‘Indian cinema’s biggest disaster,’ with a reported Rs 70-crore deficit on the day of its release.
Rajamouli’s revelation in the Netflix documentary ‘Baahubali: The Torchbearer’ offers a glimpse into the immense financial risks behind the film’s historic success.
Rajamouli and producer Shobu Yarlagadda, who bankrolled ‘Baahubali’ under the banner of Arka Media Works, recalled that the film began without a fixed budget.
Shobu said that the team was often under immense financial pressure, frequently arranging funds at the last minute just to keep the next day’s shoot on schedule.
“After a few days, the per-day cost went up to Rs 25 lakh or even more. Our four-day war sequence alone could have funded an entire small film 12 years ago. We were spending around Rs 1 crore every four days,” he said.
Rajamouli explained that given Baahubali’s massive budget, the film’s commercial success could not rely on the Telugu-speaking states alone.
“We couldn’t depend on the Telugu states alone to recover our investment. We were banking on the film working across multiple languages to ensure it became profitable,” he said.
The search for a wider audience eventually brought them to Karan Johar.
After Rana Daggubati pitched ‘Baahubali’ to him and showed him its visuals, KJo was impressed and immediately came on board and agreed to distribute the film in the Hindi market.
Despite securing a major distributor, the film’s release day proved to be an anxious and nerve-wracking experience for the team.
“On the day of the release of Part One, we still had a deficit of Rs 70 crore. What we had spent, minus what we had recovered, left us Rs 70 crore in the red,” Shobu recalled.
Rajamouli revealed, “The film opened to rave reviews in Hindi, as well as in the US, the Gulf and other international markets. But the majority of our revenue was expected to come from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The reviews there were terrible, to say the least. An image of Shiva holding a Zandu Balm instead of the Shivling was being circulated. We couldn’t process what had gone wrong. I was blank.”
Recalling the day, an emotional Prabhas said, “It was a war… I don’t know how the producers survived that day.”
Associate producer Karthikeya Vijay Yarlagadda shared, “People had already started bashing us on Twitter. We were on the verge of breaking down. I was crying, and as I was heading upstairs to get ready for a show, I saw Dad walking down the corridor. I went up to him, hugged him, and burst into tears.”
Recalling a conversation with one of his distributors, Rajamouli said, “They’re calling it the biggest disaster in Indian cinema. Those were the kinds of messages he was getting. As far as we were concerned, it was the end of our careers.”
The tide turned later that evening as positive word of mouth began to spread rapidly.
Over the next few days, ‘Baahubali’ witnessed a remarkable surge at the box office, breaking records across the Telugu states while also enjoying a highly successful run in the Hindi market.
The film stars Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, Tamannaah Bhatia, Ramya Krishnan, Sathyaraj and Nassar in prominent roles.
