Baahubali in Rs. 500-cr. club

A still from 'Baahubali'.

He has done it again. That S.S. Rajamouli has smashed several records with his Baahubali since it hit thousands of screens on July 10 is old news.

However on Monday, news broke that it had raced past the Rs. 500-crore mark, making Bollywood sit up and take notice. Only two films – 'Dhoom 3' (2013) of Yash Raj Films and, more recently, 'PK' from Vidhu Vinod Chopra Films, that starred Aamir Khan are said to have grossed over Rs. 500 crore.

Shah Rukh Khan tweeted on Sunday expressing his appreciation for ‘Team Baahubali’, and so did some more Bollywood personalities. ‘Baahubali’ has managed to hang on tenaciously, playing at over 2,000 screens around the globe in its fourth week. It has earned praise for its special effects and sheer scale of production.

On Monday, Forbes magazine recalled that this was the first time a dubbed film (originally made in Telugu and Tamil, later dubbed into Hindi and Malayalam) has garnered over Rs. 500 crore.

Given the large reach of Hindi language, the Hindi version predictably has smashed box office records by grossing Rs. 103 crore as of Monday morning, several times more than any other film that was dubbed in Hindi.

Before that the Hindi dubbed version of Robot (originally made in Tamil) had grossed Rs. 23 crore. ‘Baahubali’, the magnum opus that has Prabhas and Rana Daggubati, together with Anushka Shetty and Tamannaah Bhatia in the lead, is also the most expensive Indian film.