Baahubali: The Beginning is the first Indian film to be made on a budget of Rs 180 crore.
The film, which was released in July 2015, in 4,000 screens worldwide in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam, has raked in Rs 685.50 worldwide.Baahubali was conceived as a two part cinematic franchise - The beginning and The conclusion - at the scripting stage itself.Initially, director SS Rajamouli had approached late actor Sridevi to play the queen mother, Sivagami.But the remuneration she quoted was way beyond the film's budget and the role went to Ramya Krishnan.A major portion of the film was shot in Ramoji Film City (RFC), Hyderabad.The snow episodes of the film were shot in Bulgaria.All the waterfall scenes were filmed at Athirapally in Kerala.The iconic Mahishmati and Kalakeya army war sequences were shot for 120 days in RFC under the supervision of stunt director Peter Hein and production designer Sabu Cyril.National Award winner V Srinivas Mohan was the VFX supervisor for the Baahubali franchiseAs many as 800 VFX technicians and 15 VFX studios including Makuta, Firefly Creative, Tau Films, Prasad EFX, Srushti and AMD among others have worked for this film.For the first time in the history of Indian cinema, lyricist Madhan Karky had created a fictional language, Kilikili - complete with syllables and words - for the Kalakeya army.Prabhas had dedicated five years of his career for this film.The actor bought special gym equipment worth Rs 1.50 crore to get the desired look for his part.Prabhas apparently also met several professional WWE fighters to learn about the nuances of bodybuilding.Rana Daggubati, who played the antagonist of the film, gained 33 kilos to get a fitting physique for his character.Before Rana Daggubati, Rajamouli had considered roping in American actor Jason Momoa, who attained fame playing Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones (GoT), for Bhalladeva's role.In one of his interviews, Rana Daggubati stated that his portrayal of Bhallaladeva was inspired by legendary English actor Daniel Day-Lewis.The makers had erected a 125-feet Bhallaladeva statue for the film in RFC.Baahubali: The Beginning had set the Guinness World Record for having the largest poster of more than 50,000 sq ft during the audio release function on July 1, 2015 in Kochi.Baahubali: The Beginning is the first non-English film to be screened at the Royal Albert Hall in LondonIt won the Best Feature Film, becoming the first Telugu film to bag this honour, and Best Special Effects award at the 63rd National National Film Awards.The international version of the film, which was screened at the Busan International Film Festival, was 20 minutes shorter than the original.Besides various film festivals, the international version of the magnum opus was released in China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam and some European and Latin American countries.Streaming giant Netflix has announced a web series prequel titled Baaubali: Before the Beginning.Over 5000 junior artists worked for 250 days for shooting the war scene.20000 weapons were designed and used in the entire movie.The VFX for the film cost more than 85 crore INR.None of the characters smoke in the film.The newborn baby in Baahubali was played by a female child.