Blockbuster Indian director SS Rajamouli took to the stage at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Thursday to introduce a work-in-progress presentation of animated movie Baahubali: The Eternal War, on which he is a producer.

Directed by Ishan Shukla, the picture is a CGI spinoff of the Telugu-language Baahubali franchise which began with Rajamouli’s 2015 and 2017 global hits Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali: The Conclusion.

Lead produced by Arka Mediaworks, it follows murdered Prince Baahubali as he enters the afterlife and joins an eternal war across 14 realms between Devas and Asuras, personifications of Order and Chaos, with his destiny reshaping the cosmos forever.

By way of introduction, Rajamouli, who is part way through shooting upcoming film Varanesi, talked about his own journey to making the original hit films taking inspiration from Indian mythology.

“In the Telugu film industry, our biggest hits would get like 15 to 20 million footfalls, or admissions. So, the way we were making films was like the cost of the film should be equivalent to eight million admissions or 10 million admissions,” he recounted.

“Then one day we had this idea for Baahubali and we needed at least 60 million admissions. So, how do we make it?,” he said.

He credited longtime producer and collaborator Shobu Yarlagadda, co-head of Arka Media, for giving him both the moral and financial support to get the two films off the ground.

“At the time, Shobu gave me a small writing on a paper which I framed … if you want something, the universe will conspire and give it to you,” said Rajamouli.

“Of course, along with the universe, we need a bunch of crazy people: Shobu who was ready to invest that kind of money and Prabhas who was willing to give five years of his time for the Baahubali franchise,” he said, referring to Telugu star Prabhas Raju.

“We went ahead and made it and the Baahubali franchise got about 150 million admissions across the world.”

The films were followed by two animated series, a graphic novel and a trilogy of novels in English. Rajamouli commented that while the Baahubali animated series had failed to generate the same excitement as the original films, he had strong hopes for Shukla’s movie Baahubali: The Eternal War.

“We found moderate successes but never the kind of impact that the Baahubali franchise has made. Then one day, one more crazy guy comes along, Ishan Shukla, and he gives us an idea of what happens to Baahubali after his death, and he goes into the 14 realms of Indian mythology.”

Talking to Deadline after the presentation, Shukla revealed he became acquainted with the 14 realms while living in a monastery in Gujarat.

“I spent around four years in a monastery in India, from when I was around 30 to 35,” he said. “There was a huge painting, a mural in the temple of the 14 worlds,” he continues. “That idea stuck with me for a longtime.”

It was not this knowledge of Indian mythology that led Akra Media producer Yarlagadda to connect with Shukla, however, but rather his dystopian sci-animation Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust.

The feature voiced by the Golshifteh Farahani, Asia Argento, Lav Diaz, Gaspar Noé, Anurag Kashyap and Shekhar Kapur among others played in Rotterdam in 2024.

“Shobu called me. He saw Schirkoa, was really fascinated by it and he liked the world building. There were like two, three different worlds in that movie, so even though it was a very small indie film, the scale was there,” said Shukla.

“He could sense that I have a good grasp of scale and a lot of characters. He said maybe we should try something together. He was looking for the next Baahubali, but something super unique. That’s how it started,” he continues.

“I was really reluctant at first because what I do some is super psychedelic, but I think the connective thread was the world building.”

In the Work in Progress session, Shukla and cowriter Sowmya Sharma talked about their deep dive into Indian mythology to write the initial screenplay.

“I thought it was going to be a very quick research process because Indian mythological stories are my bedtime stories and I thought I know most of it but once I opened the book, it was endless nights… Like Mr. Rajamouli just mentioned, it’s an ocean.” said Sharma.

“I kept telling them yeah, yeah, the story is coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. I was reading more and more about the worlds and I watched the Baahubali films about a hundred times.”

Their research also took them across Indian seeking out dancers and martial artists for inspiration with the dance styles of Chhou and Kuchipudi as well as the Indian martial art Kalaripayattu woven into the action.

“As the screenplay progressed, people had to do things. They had to fight. They had to kind of express themselves musically. They had to dance to express their emotions… it just opened us to a world of hundreds of forms of dance and fighting across Indian.”

Paris-based animation director Antoine Charreyron, who worked on the character design with Florent Auguy and Dorian Marchesin under their Paris-based banner Alcyde, said it had been a steep learning curve getting to grips with the intricacies of the characters and worlds laid out in the screenplay.

“We thought this is easy. It’s The Lord of the Rings. The Devas and Asuras are the elves and trolls. That was a mistake, it’s deeper than that. There are the 14 realms, lots of details… and every detail means something. So that’s really interesting.”

Shukla said a major challenge had been transposing Telugu star Prabhas as Baahubali into animation form.

“It was a really long process because we wanted to stylize him… if we try too hard to make it look like actual Prabhas, it starts to look like a video game character,’ he said.

“So there was a sweet spot that we had to hit in which we are very, very religious to the style of this movie, but we are also religious to Prabhas fans. And Prabhas fans are, you know, they’ll kill you. So we had to be very much on point that it looks like Prabhas, that it’s believable. We went through a lot of iterations, which was kind of painful for him.”

CGI Supervisor Simon Brown (Guardians of the Galaxy) is now scaling up production having come on board in January.

“We’re deep into production. We’re building hundreds of characters, creatures, animals, props, vehicles, creating 38 environments across multiple realms,” he said.

“And we’re doing it with artists spread across multiple countries and disciplines in Mumbai, Toronto, London and Bangalore. And I’m also super excited because we’re going to get into shot production very soon. So the animatics and the viz is hitting production as well, which is awesome.”

With production now well underway, Shukla is aiming for completion in the second half on 2027, with hopes of returning to Annecy next year to preview parts of the film.