It goes without saying that SS Rajamouli’s Baahubali films are one of the most successful pan-India films to date. The epic fantasy action films have broken multiple box-office records. Recently, SS Rajamouli attended a promotional event for Baahubali: Crown of Blood, an animated series based on the Baahubali franchise, set to release on Disney Plus Hotstar on May 17. During the event, the veteran director spoke about how both parts of Baahubali went on to be a massive success despite minimum spend on promotions. Rajamouli said he wanted to utilise all the money on making the film and spend the minimum on promoting it.
SS Rajamouli explained that his team carefully crafted a publicity campaign that used all the in-house resources, instead of paying for advertisements in traditional media platforms. The RRR director said that the core idea behind any promotional campaign is to examine questions like: “How can I reach the newer audiences and how can I make them come and watch my movie?” and “How can I invest in them?”
The New York Film Critics Circle award-winning director said, “When we said that we spent zero budget on Baahubali, that means yes, we didn’t buy any spots, we didn’t pay any papers and websites to put up the posters or anything like that. But we did a lot of homework for that. We created so many videos. We created digital posters internally. We released the characters. We released the making videos, so we did a lot of things. So a lot of publicity happened but the thing is that we didn’t spend money to do it. We just used our brains and time to do it.”
The first film of the franchise, Baahubali: The Beginning, was released on July 10, 2015. It soon became the highest-grossing Telugu film of the time as it made over Rs 600 crore at the box office. It became the first Indian film to be nominated for Saturn Awards with five nominations.
Two years later, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion was released on April 28, 2017. It was made on an estimated budget of Rs 250 crore, becoming the most expensive Indian film at the time. It became the first-ever Indian film to gross over Rs 1,000 crore in 10 days. Its overall box office collection is 1788.06 crore. Amongst the number of accolades, it won the famed Saturn Award for Best International Film.
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