Sridevi's No To Rajamouli’s Bahubali

NIKHIL REVIWER , Medical Expert | NIKHIL SHARMA , Senior Quality Analyst |

Updated on Jul 17, 2015 | 12:56 PM IST | 28.7M

R Rajamouli’s 'Bahubali' has stormed the box office. The Hindi version could have been a far more attractive proposition, if according to original plans, Sridevi had played the Queen Mother in the costume drama.

Apparently, Rajamouli was very keen to have Sridevi on board. But the price she quoted—Rs. 6 crores- left Ramya Krishnan staggering and stumbling.

Would the film be able to recover its astronomical costs? In the South, yes. Though many trade pundits are not too sure of the film’s fate in the Hindi-speaking belt.

A leading director in Mumbai, a self-confessed “diehard fan” of Rajamouli, thinks it would have made more sense to make a separate Hindi version of the film. “One is glad that Karan Johar has taken charge of the dubbed Hindi version of Bahubali. Not even the biggest of the dubbed films including the Rajnikanth starrer 'Robot' and Shankar’s 'I', have made profits in North India. The budget and Rajamouli’s vision required a pan-India treatment. With due respect to Prabhas, who plays the lead in Bahubali, no one has even heard of him in the Hindi belt.”

Apparently, Rajamouli had planned to make the Hindi version of 'Bahubali' with Hrithik Roshan in the lead.

“Makes a lot more more sense. Just like 'Drishyam', where Mohanlal did the Malayalam version, Kamal Haasan the Tamil version, and now Ajay Devgn for the Hindi version. You can’t have Prabhas in a Rs.180 crore pan-India costume drama,”says a prominent producer.

However, Rajamouli was confident of his product. “From the beginning itself, we had plans to dub and release it in Hindi. The success of 'Makkhi' and the scale of 'Bahubali' are the commercial reasons. The story being universal, with simple human emotions at the core, we were confident that it would appeal to Hindi-speaking audiences as well.”