The stupendous pan-Indian success of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, which is essentially a Telugu language film, all across India is making people ask the million dollar question, "Can Bollywood pull off a Baahubali?"

Hindi is the official language of cinema and as such Hindi-language cinema i.e Bollywood cinema is seen as the de facto film industry that represents India. Films made in any other language is relegated to being 'regional cinema'. It is an unjust bias perpetuated by English language news media whose headquarters are not situated in South India. Nevertheless, the success of Baahubali raises the question: with the kind of money, power and pull that Bollywood has, will the Mumbai film industry ever be able to create a Baahubali-like phenomenon?

Well, no and there are several reasons for that. It's not just talent. Bollywood has numerous talented, visionary filmmakers and technicians. But still, Bollywood can never create a Baahubali-like event. Here's why.

1. Bollywood cannot afford it

The Baahubali films - Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali: The Conclusion - have been made on a total budget of Rs 430 crore. You must remember that SS Rajamouli had always intended to release his Baahubali films in the maximum number of theatres possible and therefore, his audience was not just based in South India but also the North and everywhere else in between. Still, he did not cast pan-Indian faces but Telugu and Tamil film actors for his project. SS Rajamouli was solely relying on Baahubali's story and its visual appeal.

In Bollywood, the scale and scope of a film is dictated by the star. The most expensive films in Bollywood such as Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (Rs 175 crore), Dhoom 3 (Rs 175 crore) and Dilwale (Rs 165 crore) are incredibly low on content and the money allocated is not invested in the quality of the film but is majorly a part of the actors' fees, which brings us to our next point.

2. Actors' salaries and egos

In a recent interview with The Indian Express , Baahubali 2's National Award-winning sound designer PM Satheesh said, "Why is that stuff like this (Baahubali) happening in Telugu cinema and is being pulled off wonderfully there because the money for the film of this sort goes into the production. It's not eaten up by a few big stars. If you have a 600 crore-film in Mumbai, at max Rs 100 crore will go into the production, if you are lucky."

When the content is top priority, most of the budget is automatically be kept aside for that. In Bollywood, the Khans, the Roshans, the Kumars and the Kapoors would never sacrifice their large salaries for a film. Forget salaries, no one would be willing to dedicate five years of their career towards a single project. Don't forget that Prabhas did not sign any film for the five years that he was involved with SS Rajamouli's Baahubali.

3. Bollywood cinema lacks religious imagery

Religion is the opium of the masses, so said Karl Marx and how right he was. Both the Baahubali films are strongly influenced by Hindu mythology (Mahabharata) and mythological fiction (Amar Chitra Katha). There is heavy religious imagery in the films, particularly in Baahubali 2. This is a common trait in Telugu, Tamil and Kannada masala films as their mainstream, commercial fare is deeply rooted in Indian mythological tropes. It is no surprise that India, being a largely religious country with a huge Hindu population, have taken to Baahubali 2 quite strongly.

However, Bollywood cinema has, for lack of a better word, become overtly secular over the years. Contemporary Bollywood films do not wear religion on their sleeve. For that matter, they do not draw from the epics as well. Films like Rajneeti and Sarkar have oblique, throwaway references to Mahabharata but at the end of the day, Bollywood's masala cinema is devoid of the 'epic' trappings of South Indian masala cinema. This prevents Bollywood films from being popular in the more religious South.

4. High-concept films have failed in Bollywood

In the South, high-concept, VFX-driven films have by and large been successful. Shankar's Enthiran: The Robot and I, SS Rajamouli's earlier work such as Eega and Magadheera and Anushka Shetty-starrer Rudhramadevi have all made money. These successes gave director Rajamouli and producer Shobu Yarlagadda the confidence to organise a coup as big as Baahubali.

In Bollywood though, high-concept films have failed miserably. Take the example of last year's Mohenjo Daro. Or Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet. Shah Rukh Khan's Ra.One made money thanks to the presence of SRK's star power but beyond a point, it did not make as much moolah as was expected of it. Love Story 2050 was a disaster and the Krrish films have nothing in terms of VFX to write home about. Failures after failures have made Bollywood too scared to approach anything as grand in scale and scope as Baahubali.

5. Bollywood has no one like SS Rajamouli

SS Rajamouli had been making films all his life as a test to finally pull off Baahubali. He first made Magadheera to test whether there were takers for his mythology-based cinema. It was a hit. Then he made Eega, a science-fiction fantasy film to see how far he could take special effects in an Indian film. That worked as well. Finally, combining all his strengths and convictions, he made Baahubali and the gamble worked.

No such visionary filmmakers in Bollywood, who are singularly devoted to making VFX-driven visual epics, exist in Bollywood. While Hollywood has many such as James Cameron, Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro, there are no such filmmakers in Bollywood. The closest to such filmmakers that Bollywood has is Sanjay Leela Bhansali. In Bollywood, the best filmmakers make more personal, small-scale films. Visual epic is not Bollywood's cup of tea.

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