From VR to graphic novels: Baahubali 2 bandwagon comes in style

The movie is set for a grand release across the country on April 28

The much awaited multi-lingual movie Baahubali 2: The Conclusion , scheduled for release on Friday (April 28) across 9,000-odd screens around the world, has set newbench marks on many fronts for the Indian film industry. The creative entrepreneurship displayed by its producers was also at its best as they sought to make use of the massive fan following to build products across the entertainment platforms to launch them alongside the second part.

While the Baahubali's potential audience is waiting for a much bigger experience when they watch the second and final part, they will soon be knowing that there was also in store a much wider range of entertainment content built around the story elements of Bahubali on top of the merchandise that already comprise of a hundred products.

These entertainment products include an animated series called Baahubali-The Lost Legends, the graphic novels, a mobile game centered on defending the mythical 'Mahishmati Kingdom, a novel trilogy, a virtual reality (VR) experience among other things that were all planned and executed well ahead of the movie's upcoming release.

" Since our intent was to go beyond the movie's form and content, I started working on the individual ideas and quickly collaborated with director S S Raja Mouli and the companies in respective fields to develop these content about two years ago," Shobu Yarlagadda, co-founder and CEO of Arka Mediaworks, and one of the producers of the Rs 400-crore Baahubali movie franchise said. Baahubali-1, which was released in July 2015, had reportedly made Rs 650 crore.

While it took five years to build the two parts of the movie using the very large sets depicting the 'Mahishmati Kingdom' in combination with a cutting-edge optical and digital technology tools, including VR, the producers of the movie used a substantial part of this period to unleash the entrepreneurial activity around the Baahubali brand. They have roped in companies and people with expertise in respective fields to develop creative content in different formats that could generate revenues along side the Baahubali-2, which is expected to cross Rs 1,000 crore in collections if it succeeds at the box office.

The animation series titled Baahubali-The Lost Legends, is being produced in association with Amazon Prime and Graphic India led by media entrepreneur Sharad Devarajan. The first episode is already available on Amazon Prime while the series is slated to be streamed one episode in a week by the global on-demand digital content platform starting next week, according to the company.

Graphic India has also produced the graphic novels based on the movie and its popular characters in the comics format and are ready for distribution. Writer Anand Neelakantan in collaboration with the the movie's creators has already published a 500-page first book of the novel trilogy- The Rise of Sivagami- in four languages and is planning to publish the same in eight more languages going forward. He claims Baahubali will attain the status similar to that of an Indian mythological story.

That's just one part of a creative enterprise built around this movie. Bangalore-based mobile games startup Moonfrog Labs has built a game that takes place in the 'Baahubali extended universe' where the player gets to fight with heroes, troops to defend the kingdom of Mahishmati. Among others, chip maker AMD's Radeon Technology Group, which has provided the technology backbone for the making of the movie, has also come up with VR experience capsules to enable the movie fans to enter the world of Baahubali using the VR headsets.

On the other hand Mumbai-based brand consulting and retail services firm Black White Orange, which was roped in by Arka Media Works to develop the merchandise around brand Baahubali, has already lined up 100 products ranging from stickers to toys with licensing arrangement with various companies and made them available in 2000 stores across India. All these form a colourful bandwagon of Baahubali-The Conclusion.