The Baahubali team that includes director S.S. Rajamouli and lead actor Prabhas, was seen promoting the film in Mumbai mainly to woo the Hindi audience. Though it’s a Telugu film dubbed in Hindi, the makers seemingly projected it as a Hindi film at the recently concluded MAMI Mumbai film festival.
The PR managers were going all out to ensure the Baahubali team gets adequate mileage in the media in Mumbai and other parts of India.
“Prabhas, the lead actor, is ready for an interview... so is Tamannaah...” the PR team reportedly said.
Back home, these very people pretend to be least interested in media coverage.
Says a source, “The team had hyped up the movie on social media, focussing on the new technology. This build up was mainly done to kindle curiosity among the audiences for the film’s first look at the festival. However, when they released the look, much of the audience and media was disappointed.”
“Aamir Khan’s Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander was also being screened, and the entire team, including Aamir was present. The cinema hall was packed, and those who couldn’t make it there, turned to Baahubali 2 session,” says the source.
Word has it that the organisers of the festival first introduced the Baahubali team and there was nothing interesting in their conversation. “Even for the new technology called Virtual Reality (VR), the response was limited,” added the source.
For the Q&A session, several individuals who ran channels on YouTube registered their names with the team.
“Prabhas and Tamannaah were giving bites to even those who had small websites. It was surprising to watch the team ever-so-willing to talk to them, whereas here, when the Telugu media approached them, they hardly showed any interest,” said the source.
The reason for this attitude seems to be that they believe the Telugu media in Hyderabad laps up anything that is being posted online.
“Anything that’s posted, becomes news, so why bother with interviews et al,” said a source in the know.
However, producer Shobhu Yarlagadda’s response on the first look of the film, was as expected. “Excellent response for the first look,” he claims.
When asked whether it’s true that Karan Johar has opted out of being involved with Baahubali 2, the producer refused to comment.
