Karan Johar’s promotional tips for Baahubali

The ‘Baahubali’ series changed the dynamics of Telugu cinema and made SS Rajamouli, a household name across the nation and deservedly so. Indeed, it has been a quantum leap for Telugu cinema in all aspects. While earlier, there were some people who would label the history of Telugu cinema into two sections as pre-RGV era and post-RGV era; Rajamouli has now carved a niche for himself in the annals of cinema with his magnum opus.

It wouldn’t be a hyperbole to therefore extend the classification to pre-Rajamouli era and post-Rajamouli era. And an equally important factor in the movie becoming such a massive success in Hindi as well is Karan Johar releasing the film there. Karan Johar spoke about ‘Baahubali’ in his autobiography ‘An Unsuitable Boy’.

According to Karan, he first heard of ‘Baahubali’ and the vision of Rajamouli from Rana Daggubati. He promptly landed in Hyderabad, met Rajamouli and discussed the significance of releasing the film in Hindi with him. Apparently, Karan said that restricting ‘Baahubali’ to Tollywood would be an injustice to the film as none other than the Telugu people would admire it.

He convinced Rajamouli on the need for a gala release in Bollywood as well. Another important suggestion made by Karan Johar was to tag the movie as ‘India’s biggest motion picture’. Karan’s rationale was “ “Why would a person fork out Rs 400 to watch the picture unless he or she was made aware of the scale and grandeur behind the project?” Rajamouli himself is a master at promoting his films and when couple with the business acumen of Karan Johar, how could ‘Baahubali’ not attract the kind of openings it did?

By Sridhar Adivi