Actor Tamannaah Bhatia’s popular love song from the Baahubali films will not appear in Baahubali: The Epic, a merged version of both movies. The news surprised fans online. Director SS Rajamouli explained that several scenes and songs were removed to shorten the film’s runtime.
In a chat with Prabhas and Rana Daggubati, Rajamouli said, “By merging both parts and removing the rolling titles, the total duration would have been around five hours and 27 minutes. The current version, however, runs for three hours and 43 minutes. Major portions that were removed include Avanthika’s love story with Shivudu, the songs Pacha Bottesina, Kanna Nidurinchara, and Irrukupo. Several sequences from the war episodes have also been trimmed.”
Focus on story and emotions
Rajamouli said the goal was to make the new version purely story-driven. “Every scene in Baahubali carries emotional weight and narrative importance, but we wanted the new version to be purely story-driven,” he said.
He explained that the first cut lasted over four hours. The team screened it for both cinema and non-cinema audiences and used their feedback to trim it to three hours and 43 minutes.
Rajamouli first thought of combining both films five years ago. He tried telling the story in a linear style, but it didn’t work. Even shorter scenes couldn’t fix the pacing, so he finally decided to cut out some episodes entirely.
Tamannaah on learning from Baahubali
In an interview with Filmfare, Tamannaah shared that Baahubali taught her a lot as an actor. She said, “Baahubali was a film that I learned the most about. We were shooting against the green screen so we had to imagine a lot of things. I learnt much about VFX and how it’s used to enhance a film. It gave me a lot more confidence to be a lot more experimental. From there onwards, I really refrained from taking people's opinions seriously. I started to trust my gut a lot more. It gave me a lot of insight into my own personality.”
About Baahubali: The Epic
SS Rajamouli’s blockbuster films Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) have now been combined into one film titled Baahubali: The Epic. It will release this Friday in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi.
The movie tells the story of a man who learns the truth about his royal heritage and claims his rightful throne. It stars Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, and Tamannaah Bhatia. The film is produced by Arka Media Works.
The combined version runs for three hours and 45 minutes and will release in more than 1,150 theatres worldwide.
According to Sacnilk, Baahubali earned ₹650 crore globally, while Baahubali 2 grossed ₹1,788.06 crore. The sequel is India’s third highest-grossing film, after Dangal and Pushpa 2: The Rule.