‘Baahubali’ Star Rana Daggubati On Telugu Films Going Global, Pan-Indian Cinema & Working On First Netflix Series ‘Rana Naidu’
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: While the world is currently in thrall to S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR, South Indian star Rana Daggubati was part of the first wave of Telugu cinema to sweep the globe – starring in Rajamouli’s Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, in which he played the bad guy, Bhallaladeva.
Attending the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, Daggubati talked to Deadline about the global expansion of the Hyderabad-based, Telugu-language film industry, his upcoming Netflix show Rana Naidu, and some of the changes that have rocked the Indian industry over the past few years.
First off, Daggubati says that, while it’s exciting that global audiences are embracing Telugu movies, they’ve always had a huge audience among Telugu-speaking Indians living overseas.
Here in India, there’s more excitement around the fact that Indians who don’t speak Telugu have also started to watch these films. “Baahubali was not just the first Telugu film that the West watched, it was also one of the first Telugu films that India watched within ourselves,” Daggubati says. “That was the first time it was accepted that cinema from all different parts of India can land across the country and do a good job.” Several other “pan-Indian” blockbusters in different Indian languages have been released since then – RRR, the K.G.F.
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