What was the toughest part in the making of two-part Baahubali ? “To keep the energies of the team intact and to get the going smooth,” said S S Rajamouli, the director of the movie that breached the ₹2,000-crore-mark to emerge as the biggest grosser in the Indian film industry.

After a strenuous yet gratifying five-year journey, Rajamouli is taking a break. “I haven’t decided on my next project yet. It will be sometime before I work on my next project,” he says.

Rajamouli was categorical in saying that there would be no sequel to the film. “We have completed the full story in two parts. It wouldn’t be honest film making to make a sequel to it,” he said.

Had he expected the tremendous response that the film received? “We expected it to be a hit in the south. But what we didn’t expect it to be so huge a hit in the north,” he said.

Première on Sony Max

He was interacting with a select group of reporters here recently, ahead of the television première of Baahubali 2 - The Conclusion on Sony Max on October 8. Incidentally, Baahubali - 1 , too, was telecast on the same channel in 2015. Flanked by Prabhas and Rana Daggubati, who played the hero and villain in the film made with a budget of ₹450 crore, Rajamouli shared his experiences on the making of the movie and his views on film-making.

He asserted that there was nothing that had changed for him after the success of the film. “But what’s changed is I lost my privacy in the north, too,” he said with a chuckle.

On a question about the failure of big films of late, he said the art of film-making was quite a complicated one. “You will never know which will succeed or not. It [Bollywood] will be back on the purple patch soon,” he observed.

Technique or content?

Rajamouli said both technique and content areequally important for a movie to become successful.

“It is like a bus with an engine with a shell. Even if you have a good engine, it won’t get you anywhere unless you have a good shell. If you have a good shell and no engine, you won’t get anywhere. A good story can’t guarantee a hit,” he pointed out.

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