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 The makers of "Baahubali 2" hope its top-notch visual effects
will wean Indian audiences from Hollywood blockbusters, enticing
them with the magical kingdoms, rampaging armies and towering
palaces of a homegrown fantasy epic.
"If art was easy, everybody would do it," said Pete Draper,
co-founder of Makuta VFX, which is stitching the film's
live-action scenes together with computer-generated imagery.
"Every single shot has its own challenges. Working hours right
now are crazy. We are finishing daily at 4 a.m."
Agencies that closely track the box office say "Baahubali 2" is
the most highly awaited Indian film of the decade. But the
competition for Spider-Man and other movie franchises from
overseas isn't coming from Bollywood.
When it opened in cinemas in 2015, dubbed versions of "Baahubali:
The Beginning", made in the Telugu language widely spoken in
India's southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana,
resonated with audiences nationwide.
It used computer-generated imagery to depict ancient kingdoms
and bloody wars in a quintessentially Indian battle of good
versus evil.
Film-maker S.S. Rajamouli aims to do even better when the next
installment is released on April 28.
Inspired by Hollywood epics such as "Ben Hur" and "The Ten
Commandments" when growing up, Rajamouli wanted to create a
tentpole franchise that delivered a memorable movie experience.
But younger audiences were looking to Hollywood franchises such
as "The Fast and the Furious", and the superheroes of the Marvel
and DC Comics universe for the big-screen thrills Indian cinema
was unable to provide.
"They have heavy budgets, they have huge star casts and huge
studios backing them," Rajamouli, 43, said in an interview in
Hyderabad, his home city.
"But if we make 10 percent of it in an Indian context, with our
stories, our heroes and heroines ... we can easily compete."
Visual effects head Draper was at the sprawling movie set every
day of filming to make sure location shots and actors' movements
synchronized with CGI-enhanced rendering on screen.
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By day, the half-built palace, an arena, the torso of a statue and a
stone temple flanked by blue screens don't look sufficiently
formidable, so the team of nearly 80 animators has been given the
task of fleshing out the heft and detail.
To keep down production costs on a budget of $67 million, work on
the CGI-heavy movie was distributed among 35 studios across
continents.
"We didn't have any studio backing us. Raising capital was a
challenge," said Prasad Devineni, one of the producers.
If all goes well, a record-breaking run for "Baahubali 2" would be a
wake-up call for Bollywood, where cinema attendance has halved from
a decade ago.
In 2016, Indian box-office collections fell to 99 billion rupees
($1.5 billion), down from 101 billion a year earlier.
Bollywood, reliant on a tried-and-tested formula of romances and
masala thrillers, has failed to develop its own big-ticket
franchises, piggy-backing instead on "Baahubali", with top producer
Karan Johar marketing the movie in Hindi this month.
With a spinoff TV series, an animated offering for Amazon
videostreaming, a comic book and a possible third film in the works,
"Baahubali" could lure back Indian audiences.
"It has shown us the way - how to market, build euphoria around it,"
said Rajkumar Akella, India managing director at global box-office
tracker comScore.
The makers always envisaged the film as a franchise, with many
narratives branching off its storyline, to hook the maximum number
of viewers later."Our audiences might be watching English films, or
Hollywood films, and getting used to them, but the blood doesn't
change, the DNA doesn't change," said Rajamouli.
(Editing by Tony Tharakan and Clarence Fernandez)
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