Despite long gaps, Telugu stars bet on sequels

Despite long gaps in between, the trend of two-part films is all set to gain even more ground in Telugu entertainment. It seems that filmmakers are now taking to two sequels in a row business very seriously, despite box office failures of some of the recent releases. From the Baahubali led boom, filmmakers have realized that big budget films call for a bigger narrative that needs more than one movie to complete the story.

The trend started with Rajamouli’s Baahubali, which broke the glass ceiling and set the ball rolling for the rest of the filmmakers who saw opportunity in capitalizing on the massive content, world building and the power of a larger than life narrative that can only be captured in two films.

Ever since its release, Baahubali has been inspiring many, as evident with the current slew of two-part films being made at the moment.

Jr NTR’s Dragon, which is being made on an international scale by Prashanth Neel, is all set to be a two-part film, with the director saying he would need two films to do justice to the scale of his film. The same is being speculated for Allu Arjun’s Raaka as well, which is being directed by Atlee. Though nothing has been confirmed yet, Ram Charan’s RC17 along with Sukumar is also said to be going the two-part way.

In fact, the team is said to be planning to release the two films like Dhurandhar, with barely a gap of four to five months in between. That way, there won’t be an agonizing wait for the audiences, which would keep their interest alive for the second part while keeping the first part’s magic alive.

With so many big budgeted films going the sequel route, it would be interesting to see if the trend continues in future, with either long awaited parts or entirely new projects.