SS Rajamouli’s films have consistently pushed the scale of Indian filmmaking with blockbuster hits like ‘RRR’ and before that ‘Baahubali’. His next feature, Varanasi, scheduled for release in April 2027, is set to go even further, setting thousands of years in remote locations and places like Antarctica, and depicting the eponymous city of Varanasi facing an asteroid. Frame sizes have also increased, with some planned to be shot on 70mm Imax film.
After attending an in-production panel at the Annecy Animation Festival introducing the makers of Baahubali: Eternal War, Variety spoke with Rajamouli about the progress on Varanasi. “What I can say is that most of the shooting has been completed and all the important big spectacle action sequences have been completed,” says Rajamouli. We’re[currently]working on interconnecting small scenes, so we should be able to finish shooting hopefully by September, maybe a little bit into October. ” When discussing whether shooting the film in Imax format influenced the way he approached the film creatively, Rajamouli said it was quite the opposite.
“From the beginning, we knew that the sequence we came up with was perfect for the Imax format. We didn’t change anything just for the sake of the format,” he says, noting that the adjustments made were minor. “Our eyes are obviously trained to shoot in the CinemaScope format, which I love, so we were just thinking that in order to make this look good in both Imax and CinemaScope, we needed to do some anamorphic framing. So it took a little bit of adjusting for the first few days, and then we figured out how to do it.”
Alongside the production of ‘Varanasi’, the ‘Baahubali’ series hopes to deepen the global connections of the Indian animation industry through director Ishan Shukla’s upcoming feature ‘Eternal War’.
Considering the balance of working on a feature like Varanasi while working on an animated sequel to Baahubali, Rajamouli points out that there is a lot of writing and history around Baahubali at this point, so expanding on the story is quite natural. “We have a Baahubali world that has already been written, so when you step into the Baahubali world, you don’t have to stay there. There is a lot of work that has already been done,” he says. “The second part is when someone like Ishan (Shukla) comes in. First, I check and test him to see if he understands how the characters in Baahubali work. And then, yes, once I see that he understands it, I step back and let them take over.”
Director Rajamouli is confident about the transition of Shukla and Baahubali into the animation medium, considering that the Indian animation industry is a bit underdeveloped compared to live-action feature films. “We always believed that ‘Baahubali’ would be successful in this medium. The key is to find the right people, the right team and the right story arc. So we always had the belief that we would take the leap,” says Rajamouli. “The moment when Ishan had the idea to take Baahubali into the 14 realms of Indian mythology. We knew this was the moment we had been waiting for. And of course, it’s the creation of an idea, and a lot of people fail at expanding on that idea.”
The filmmakers of “Forever War” had a global audience in mind during production, and expressed the same in their presentation during production. Mr. Rajamouli said the medium has perhaps allowed for an even wider range of expression, and that it perfectly captures what he considers the beauty, or “color,” of Indian storytelling. “I’m not just talking about the colors (literally),” he added, “but the characters, the emotions, and the way they’re played out are very colorful. I think that’s uniquely Indian. And the audience, if not the global audience, has already seen movies like Baahubali and “Baahubali.” Those who have seen “RRR” or have had a taste of it are definitely waiting for the next one.It is very difficult to get all that taste in live action, but it is even more possible in animation. I very much hope that War will make that possible.”
The flexibility of the animation medium allows The Eternal War’s story to reach incredible scale. Mr. Rajamouli has said in the past that such scale should not overtake the emotion of the work, but he also believes that spectacle goes hand in hand. “I think it’s the emotions that make this film great. I’ve never seen them as two separate things. For me, the emotions are the seeds, and the spectacle is the tree hidden within. So when you pick a seed, you see how it blossoms into that huge tree.”
Varanasi’s 2027 release coincidentally coincides with the return of IMAX theaters to the city of Hyderabad. Speaking enthusiastically about this, Rajamouli says, “The time has come to have an IMAX theater in Hyderabad, because for me, Hyderabad and the Telugu-speaking states of Andhra and Telangana are the biggest movie fans in the whole world.”
“I think they love movies so much. Not just Telugu movies, but Hindi movies, Tamil movies, Malayalam movies, British movies, any movie made around the world, they really love it and they deserve to have their own Imax.”Rajamouli recalls that one of the best Imax 70mm projectors was at Prasad Imax in Hyderabad. “But once IMAX went digital and things broke down, a lot of other cities had IMAX and we didn’t have it anymore. As a movie fan, it was very frustrating, but it’s finally happening and I’m so happy.”
