{"id":3029,"date":"2026-06-26T07:06:59","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3029"},"modified":"2026-06-26T07:06:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T07:06:59","slug":"s-s-rajamouli-says-varanasi-imax-action-done-interconnecting-scenes-remain-and-baahubali-belongs-in-animation-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=3029","title":{"rendered":"S.S. Rajamouli Says \u2018Varanasi\u2019 Imax Action Done, Interconnecting Scenes Remain and \u2018Baahubali\u2019 Belongs in Animation (EXCLUSIVE)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tThe films of S.S. Rajamouli have consistently pushed the scale of Indian filmmaking \u2013 with blockbusters such as \u201cRRR,\u201d before that the \u201cBaahubali\u201d films. His upcoming feature \u201cVaranasi,\u201d set to release in April 2027, is set to go even further \u2013 set across thousands of years and locations as remote and Antarctica, the plot seeing the eponymous city of Varanasi facing down an asteroid. Even the size of the frame is expanding, with the feature to be shot in part on 70mm Imax film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tFollowing his surprise appearance at the Annecy Animation Festival work-in-progress panel to introduce the filmmakers of \u201cBaahubali: The Eternal War,\u201d Variety <\/em>spoke to Rajamouli about progress on \u201cVaranasi.\u201d \u201cWhat I can say is we have completed a major portion of the shoot, all the important big spectacle action sequences are done,\u201d Rajamouli says. We are [now] into doing the smaller, interconnecting scenes so hopefully, by September, maybe a little bit into October, we should be finishing shooting.\u201d When discussing whether shooting the film on the Imax format had influenced the way he had approached the film creatively, Rajamouli says that it\u2019s quite the opposite. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFrom the beginning, we knew the sequences that were conceived would be best justified in [the] Imax format \u2013 we didn\u2019t change anything just for the format,\u201d he says, noting that any adjustments made were minor. \u201cBecause our eyes have been trained to shoot in the CinemaScope format, which obviously I love, [we were] just thinking about, we need to frame this [to] look good both in Imax as well as CinemaScope, the anamorphic framing, so that took a little bit of adjustment for the first few initial days. Then we understood how to do it.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time as working on \u201cVaranasi,\u201d the \u201cBaahubali\u201d franchise is hoping to deepen the global ties of the Indian animation industry through the upcoming feature \u201cThe Eternal War,\u201d directed by Irshan Shukla. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tConsidering the balance of working on a feature like \u201cVaranasi\u201d during the production of the animated continuation of \u201cBaahubali,\u201d Rajamouli notes that there\u2019s so much writing and history around \u201cBaahubali\u201d by this point that expanding the story comes fairly naturally. \u201cWe have a whole world of \u2018Baahubali\u2019 that\u2019s already been written, so we don\u2019t need to dwell when we step into the world of \u2018Baahubali,\u2019 there\u2019s a lot of work that\u2019s already done,\u201d he says. \u201cThe second part is when a person like Ishan [Shukla] comes in, you see and test the initial whether he has that understanding of how the characters in \u2018Baahubali work, \u2018and once you see that yes, he understood it, I step back, and I let them take over.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRajamouli is confident in Shukla as well as the move for \u201cBaahubali\u201d into the medium of animation, with consideration of the animation industry in India being somewhat underdeveloped by comparison to its live action feature films. \u201cWe always believed \u2018Baahubali\u2019 will find success in the medium. It is just about finding the right person, right team, and the right expansion of the story, so we always had the belief in taking the leap,\u201d Rajamouli says. \u201cThe moment Ishan came with the idea of taking \u2018Baahubali\u2019 into the 14 realms of Indian mythology. I thought, that this is the moment that we were waiting for, and of course, that\u2019s ideation, and the expansion of that ideation is where many people fail.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe filmmakers of \u201cThe Eternal War\u201d were conscious of an international audience during production, and expressed as much during the work-in-progress presentation. Rajamouli says that the medium perhaps allowed an even greater range of expression, saying that it perfectly captures what he sees as the beauty of Indian stories, which is the \u201ccolor.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t just mean color [literally],\u201d he adds, \u201cbut the characters, the emotions, and how the emotions are played are very colorful, I think that is very unique to India, and I think the audiences \u2013 I won\u2019t say audiences across the whole world \u2013 but those have already seen \u2018Baahubali\u2019 or \u2018RRR,\u2019 or whoever got a taste of that, are definitely waiting for more. Getting all that taste in live action is very difficult, with animation it\u2019s much more feasible, so all of us are very hopeful that \u2018Eternal War\u2019 makes that possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe flexibility of the animated medium allows the story of \u201cThe Eternal War\u201d to reach mind-boggling scale. Rajamouli has spoken in the past about not letting such scale overtake the emotion of a feature, but he also sees the spectacle as inextricably linked. \u201cI think it is the emotion that drives the bigness of the film. I never see them as two separate things. For me, the emotion is the seed, the spectacle is the tree hidden inside. So, when you choose the seed, you know how it is going to bloom up into that massive tree.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe release of \u201cVaranasi\u201d in 2027 is serendipitously timed to the Imax theater returning to the city of Hyderabad. Rajamouli spoke enthusiastically of it, saying\u00a0 \u201cit was high time we had Imax theaters in Hyderabad, because for me Hyderabad and the states of Telugu-speaking people Andhra and Telangana are the biggest film buffs in the entire world,\u201d Rajamouli says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI believe they love film so much: not just Telugu cinema, they love Hindi cinema, they love Tamil cinema, they love Malayalam cinema, they love English cinema, whatever films are made across the globe, they love it with their heart, and they deserve to have their own Imax.\u201d Rajamouli reminisces that one of the best Imax 70mm projectors used to be in Hyderabad with the Prasad Imax. \u201cBut once Imax turned digital and something fell off, and then many other cities were having Imaxs, and we didn\u2019t have that anymore. It was like very frustrating for us as film buffs, but finally it is happening, and I\u2019m so happy for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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S.S. Rajamouli talked to Variety after at a highly anticipated sneak-peak of \u2018Baahubali\u2019 at France\u2019s Annecy Animation Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[344,2492,1098,2522,1101],"class_list":["post-3029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-annecy-animation-festival","tag-baahubali","tag-imax","tag-ss-rajamouli","tag-varanasi"],"yoast_head":"\nS.S. 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