Baahubali: How an Indian film became a global blockbuster

The story of Amarendra Baahubali (Prabhas) and Bhalla Deva (Rana Daggubati), cousins raised by the same mother Sivagami (Ramya Krishnan), who is also the reigning queen of Mahishmati, has been ruling the cineworld since its release. A bit like a not-so-convoluted Indian version of Game of Thrones, Baahubali isn’t your typical Telegu/Tamil film, where the opening itself is enough for you to predict the ending. With a cocktail of grand stunts, visuals and mixed acting, Baahubali made a name as the Star Wars of India with its initial success. The record smashing epic historical flick Baahubali 2: The Conclusion opened at the end of April and crossed the Rs 1000 crore milestone within just ten days of its release. SS Rajamouli’s magnum opus bagged a $10.3 million in its opening weekend in the US, making it the third-largest opening for a foreign-language film in US history, after the Chinese film Hero in 2004 and Jet Li’s Fearless in 2006. Baahubali 2 also went on to beat Dream Works anticipated Boss Baby and Tom Hanks starrer The Circle to become the No. 3 film of that week. But what is the secret behind this breakthrough? While we are at it, let’s have a look at the demographics of the selected regions for the screening of the film. According to Wall Street Journal, Indo-Americans are a fast growing community with high disposable income, who represent only 1 percent of the US population. The Indian-American population grew to nearly three million in 2010, up 69 percent from 2000. The film brought quite a bit of luck for Greg Foster, CEO of IMAX, for whose company Baahubali 2 has become the all-time biggest domestic IMAX opening for a foreign-language film. His strategy was simple - IMAX screened the film in some 45 theatres in areas with large Indian populations, which also reflected the shifting demographics across America. Soma Kancherla, who is a partner of Great India Films, the distributor of Baahubali 2 in North America, believes that there’s a growing audience for Indian films in the US, but not every Indian film is as successful as Baahubali 2. He marks it as a rather infrequent occurrence. The Western audience still has a taste for art-house films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Amelie, and Life is Beautiful, the most successful foreign language films in the US to date, but tastes are now slowly expanding. The huge success of English director Danny Boyle, who tried to bring a Bollywood sensibility to a non-Indian audience with Slumdog Millionaire, is proof of this. But popular Indian films like Baahubali have a long way to go in terms of its quality, both in narratives and depiction. Although the film was a huge financial success in the US, Baahubali 2 has already been replaced by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 after its first week on nearly every IMAX screen.