How S. S. Rajamouli’s time-bending epic aims to push Indian cinema into a new orbit
When S. S. Rajamouli walks onto a stage now, it feels less like a film launch and more like a declaration of intent. At Hyderabad’s Ramoji Film City this November, the director behind Baahubali and RRR stepped out before tens of thousands of fans, a screen the size of a city block at his back, and unveiled the title of his next global gamble: Varanasi.
The first footage, projected on a 130-foot by 100-foot canvas, hinted at a movie that moves restlessly through centuries and continents. An asteroid hurtles toward Earth, shards landing everywhere from ancient riverfronts to Antarctica’s ice fields; a blood-soaked warrior named Rudhra charges on a bull, trident in hand; temples loom in the background as if time itself has folded in on the holy city that gives the film its name.
For Rajamouli, Varanasi is not just his first collaboration with Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu and global icon Priyanka Chopra Jonas. It is a time-travel epic built on Hindu mythology, powered by IMAX cameras, and one of the largest budgets ever allocated to an Indian film.
Much about the story remains secret. But between official announcements, leaks from the “GlobeTrotter” launch event, and early interviews, a detailed picture is beginning to form. Here, in the spirit of a magazine deep dive, are 30 key facts that explain why Varanasi (2027) is already being treated as a landmark in the making.
Film basics
1. A title rooted in India’s holiest city
The film is simply called Varanasi—stylised as Vāranāsi—after the sacred city on the banks of the Ganges. In Hindu belief, Varanasi is a place where life, death, and rebirth meet, a crossroads between worlds. Naming a time-travel adventure after it signals that the movie will treat the city not merely as a location but as an idea: a spiritual axis around which the plot turns.
2. A Sankranti 2027 release window
Varanasi is slated to arrive in theaters during Sankranti 2027, one of India’s biggest festival periods and a prized slot for major Telugu releases. Landing there plants the film firmly in the commercial mainstream while also positioning it as an “event” picture, the kind audiences plan around weeks in advance.
3. A Telugu film designed for a global crowd
The primary language is Telugu, but the production is conceived as a pan-Indian and international release from day one. Dubbing and subtitling in multiple languages are a given, but what’s notable is that Rajamouli is reportedly structuring the narrative rhythm to travel well across cultures—much as RRR did when it became a streaming sensation worldwide.
4. Science fiction meets epic action-adventure
Unlike the historical fantasy of Baahubali or the alt-history revolt of RRR, Varanasi dives headlong into science fiction. It’s being described as an “epic action-adventure” whose toolkit includes time travel, cosmic events, and advanced technology, all refracted through Indian mythological imagery—think an Indiana Jones-style quest reframed through the lens of the Ramayana and other epics.
5. A budget that could reset Indian benchmarks
Early estimates put the film’s budget between ₹1,000 and ₹1,200 crore, an unprecedented range that would make it one of the most expensive productions in Indian history. That money isn’t just going into star salaries; it’s underwriting large-scale sets, extensive overseas shoots, and visual effects aimed at competing with top-tier Hollywood tentpoles.
The creative brain trust
6. S. S. Rajamouli at the helm
After Baahubali and RRR, Rajamouli has become the rare Indian director whose name alone can sell tickets across regions. In Varanasi, he’s doubling down on his trademark mix of operatic emotion, muscular action, and mythic scale—but now with time travel and speculative science layered in. The film is widely seen as his bid to consolidate his reputation as a global blockbuster architect, not just a regional hitmaker.
7. A father–son writing partnership
The screenplay is co-written by Rajamouli and his father, veteran storyteller V. Vijayendra Prasad, whose credits span from Baahubali to Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Together, they’ve been developing this project in some form for more than a decade, refining it from a vague “adventure with Mahesh Babu” into a meticulously structured time-travel saga.
8. Four voices shaping the dialogue
Dialogue duties are shared by Vijayendra Prasad, S. S. Kanchi, S. Gopal Reddy, and Deva Katta—a team that brings together old-school mythic cadence and contemporary conversational flair. The goal is clear: keep the film rooted in Telugu idiom and cultural reference, while making sure lines survive translation into Hindi, Tamil, and English without losing their bite.
9. P.S. Vinod behind the camera
Cinematographer P. S. Vinod, known for sleek, kinetic visuals in films across multiple industries, is tasked with making Varanasi legible across radically different time periods—from 6th-century India to stark polar landscapes and near-future cityscapes. Shooting for IMAX and other premium large formats demands a precise eye for texture, scale, and motion, making his role central to the film’s promise of immersion.
10. M. M. Keeravani on score duty
Fresh off an Oscar win for “Naatu Naatu,” composer M. M. Keeravani reunites with Rajamouli to score Varanasi. Expect a soundtrack that moves from choral, ritualistic motifs in the ancient segments to more electronic, percussive textures in the sci-fi sequences, while still anchoring everything in melodic lines that work across cultures—the formula that turned RRR songs into global earworms.
11. A specialist editor for massive scale
Editing is handled by Bikkina Thammiraju, an increasingly sought-after name in Telugu cinema. His challenge here will be structural as much as rhythmic: keeping a time-jumping, globe-trotting story coherent without losing the propulsive pacing audiences now expect from a Rajamouli spectacle.
12. VFX designed from the ground up
Visual effects are supervised by V. Srinivas Mohan, whose work on films like Baahubali helped reset Indian audiences’ expectations for digital imagery. For Varanasi, he’s reportedly coordinating multiple international VFX houses to realise everything from ancient cities and cosmic impacts to seamless time-shift transitions—all planned at the pre-visualisation stage rather than added late in the game.
A star-heavy, globally minded cast
13. Mahesh Babu as Rudhra, the warrior-seeker
At the centre of Varanasi stands Mahesh Babu as Rudhra, introduced in the teaser riding a bull and wielding a trident, his face streaked with blood and determination. The character appears to fuse the clarity of a classic adventure hero with the inner conflict of a spiritual seeker; his journey, we’re told, traverses not just geography and time but different states of belief.
14. Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s high-octane homecoming
Priyanka Chopra Jonas returns to Indian cinema after several years of Hollywood work, playing a character named Mandakini. Early posters show her poised on a cliff with a firearm, sari billowing in the wind—a fusion of traditional imagery and modern action heroine. For Chopra, it’s both a Telugu comeback and a carefully chosen project that matches her global brand.
15. Prithviraj Sukumaran as a formidable antagonist
Malayalam star Prithviraj Sukumaran is cast as Kumbha, the film’s principal villain—described by Rajamouli in early comments as one of the most complex antagonists he has written. Reports from the launch event describe an imposing first look, positioning Kumbha as a ruthless force that stalks the narrative across timelines.
16. A truly global supporting ensemble
Beyond its Indian stars, Varanasi is expected to feature a slate of international actors, reflecting the film’s settings in Africa, polar regions, and various modern metropolitan hubs. Casting is being handled with an eye toward authenticity—African characters played by African actors, scientists by performers with experience in Western productions—so that the “global” in this story feels lived-in rather than cosmetic.
Story, world-building, and themes
17. A globetrotting adventure with Indian roots
Rajamouli has framed Varanasi as a globe-spanning action-adventure grounded in Indian cultural themes. The film reportedly takes cues from classic Hollywood adventure serials—he has explicitly cited Raiders of the Lost Ark—but replaces colonial-era treasure hunts with quests anchored in Indic mythology and philosophy.
18. Time travel as the narrative engine
The tagline “time trotter” flashed briefly at the end of the teaser, confirming what the imagery already suggests: Varanasi is a time-travel film. Early footage and leaks mention settings as far back as 512 CE, with story threads unfolding in ancient India, the present day, and possibly the near future, all linked by a cosmic event that fractures time and space.
19. Spiritual undertones baked into the premise
Using Varanasi—the city—as a narrative lodestar allows the film to play with motifs of karma, moksha, and cyclical time. Rather than a purely scientific take on time travel, Rajamouli appears to be reaching for something more metaphysical: a story in which moving across eras also means confronting different layers of the self, and where the sacred geography of the Ganges becomes a recurring visual and thematic anchor.
20. A classic hero’s journey with a twist
Rudhra’s arc, according to people familiar with the script, combines the external beats of a swashbuckling hero—quests, betrayals, impossible rescues—with a subtler inner journey. He’s expected to begin as a man of action and gradually become a man of questions, forced to reconsider what “victory” means when time itself refuses to stay still. That duality—warrior and seeker—is central to the film’s emotional pitch.
21. A canvas that spans continents
Even before the teaser, there were reports of location scouting and shooting plans in African jungles, polar landscapes, and multiple Indian states. The announcement video appears to confirm that the story moves from a painstakingly recreated ancient Varanasi to far-flung modern sites, tracking the fallout of the asteroid Shambhavi as its fragments reshape history at different points on the globe.
Production scale and technology
22. Built for IMAX and premium large formats
Unlike many Indian films that retrofit IMAX versions late in post-production, Varanasi is being shot from the outset with large-format exhibition in mind. Rajamouli and P. S. Vinod are reportedly designing frames that can play both in conventional multiplexes and on towering IMAX screens, with careful attention to depth, horizon lines, and crowd composition.
23. A launch event that looked like a music festival
The “GlobeTrotter Event” at Ramoji Film City was staged less like a press conference and more like a live spectacle. Fan estimates and media reports place attendance at around 50,000, with a massive outdoor screen, fireworks, elaborate set recreations of Varanasi’s ghats, and live performances leading up to the title reveal and teaser screening. It was also streamed on a major OTT platform, a first for an Indian movie launch.
24. A working title that hinted at the plot
Before Varanasi became official, the project circulated under several codenames—SSMB29, GEN 63, and, most prominently, “GlobeTrotter.” The moniker was less about secrecy and more a straightforward nod to the film’s structure: a protagonist literally racing across the globe (and, by extension, across eras) to piece together the mystery set in motion by the cosmic impact.
25. Rajamouli’s “most challenging” production yet
Rajamouli has publicly called Varanasi his most demanding production to date, and it’s not hard to see why. The film combines period reconstruction, heavy VFX, action set-pieces, and far-flung locations, all while trying to maintain a coherent emotional throughline. Insiders speak of a schedule stretching across several years, with the team often shooting multiple time periods in parallel.
26. Backed by Sri Durga Arts and Showing Business
The film is produced by Sri Durga Arts in association with Showing Business, with producers including K. L. Narayana and S. S. Karthikeya, Rajamouli’s son. It’s an unusually collaborative arrangement, blending long-time Telugu industry players with a younger generation eager to position the movie aggressively in overseas markets.
27. A teaser designed to light up social media
The first teaser, unveiled at the GlobeTrotter event and promptly clipped, reposted, and dissected online, is less a traditional trailer and more an atmospheric tone-setter: a cascading chain of images—asteroid, ancient city, polar ice, charging bull, temples collapsing in slow motion—that ends on Mahesh Babu’s blood-smeared face as his name, Rudhra, flashes on-screen. Within hours, hashtags tied to the film trended across Indian social media.
Hype, expectations, and potential impact
28. A fan frenzy years before release
Between Mahesh Babu’s dedicated fandom, Rajamouli’s global visibility, and Priyanka Chopra’s crossover appeal, Varanasi has had an unusually intense hype cycle for a film still two years away. Ticketing platforms, fan clubs, and meme pages lit up as soon as the teaser dropped; some fans travelled across states just to attend the launch event in person, treating it as a pilgrimage of sorts.
29. Framed as India’s answer to Hollywood mega-epics
Industry chatter already casts Varanasi as “India’s response” to the likes of Dune or Avengers: Endgame: a film that uses the grammar of contemporary blockbuster cinema—IMAX, heavy CGI, serialized storytelling—but filters it through distinctively Indian myths, settings, and emotional beats. If Baahubali built the first bridge and RRR carried it to the world, Varanasi is meant to be the moment where Indian cinema strides confidently across.
30. A bid to redefine Indian cinema’s global reach
Rajamouli has already proven that films in Telugu can pack theaters in Tokyo, trend on U.S. streaming platforms, and win Oscars. With Varanasi, he appears to be aiming for something even more audacious: a movie that treats India’s sacred geography and epic literature not as barriers to universality but as its engine. If the finished film matches the ambition on display so far, it could reshape how Indian blockbusters are made—and where they are expected to succeed.
In the end, all the numbers and superlatives—₹1,000-plus-crore budgets, 50,000-strong launch events, screens taller than apartment buildings—are really in service of a simpler question: can Varanasi deliver a story that earns its scale?
We won’t know until Sankranti 2027. For now, what we have are glimpses: an enraged warrior on a charging bull, time itself cracking open above an ancient city, and a director who has turned audacity into a habit, reaching once more for something larger than the last thing he made.
If Rajamouli and his collaborators stick the landing, Varanasi may not just be a film set in a city of rebirth. It may help Indian cinema reinvent itself yet again.
Comments