S.S. Rajamouli shares Varanasi update: “We have completed major portions, all the important big spectacle action sequences are done”

June 26, 2026 - 4:38 PM IST

Filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli has shared a production update on Varanasi, confirming that the principal photography for the film’s large-scale action sequences has been completed.

S.S. Rajamouli shares Varanasi update: “We have completed major portions, all the important big spectacle action sequences are done”

Speaking at the Annecy Animation Festival, where he appeared for a work-in-progress panel on Baahubali: The Eternal War, Rajamouli said, “What I can say is we have completed a major portion of the shoot, all the important big spectacle action sequences are done. We are into doing the smaller, interconnecting scenes so hopefully, by September, maybe a little bit into October, we should be finishing shooting.”

On the question of whether shooting in the IMAX format had changed his creative approach, Rajamouli said the direction of influence ran the other way. He said, “From the beginning, we knew the sequences that were conceived would be best justified in the IMAX format - we didn’t change anything just for the format. Because our eyes have been trained to shoot in the CinemaScope format, which obviously I love, [we were] just thinking about, we need to frame this to look good both in IMAX as well as CinemaScope, the anamorphic framing. So, that took a little bit of adjustment for the first few initial days. Then we understood how to do it.”

Alongside Varanasi, Rajamouli is also overseeing the animated feature Baahubali: The Eternal War, directed by Ishan Shukla. Rajamouli said, “We have a whole world of Baahubali that’s already been written, so we don’t need to dwell when we step into the world of Baahubali, there’s a lot of work that’s already done. The second part is when a person like Ishan [Shukla] comes in. You see and test the initial whether he has that understanding of how the characters in Baahubali work, and once you see that yes, he understood it, I step back, and I let them take over.”

Rajamouli expressed confidence in the animated medium as a vehicle for the franchise, saying, “We always believed Baahubali will find success in the medium. It is just about finding the right person, right team, and the right expansion of the story, so we always had the belief in taking the leap. The moment Ishan came with the idea of taking ‘Baahubali’ into the 14 realms of Indian mythology, I thought, that this is the moment that we were waiting for, and of course, that’s ideation, and the expansion of that ideation is where many people fail.”

Rajamouli also addressed the return of an IMAX theatre to Hyderabad, which coincides with the planned 2027 release of Varanasi. He said, “It was high time we had IMAX theaters in Hyderabad, because for me Hyderabad and the states of Telugu-speaking people Andhra and Telangana are the biggest film buffs in the entire world. I believe they love film so much: not just Telugu cinema, they love Hindi cinema, they love Tamil cinema, they love Malayalam cinema, they love English cinema, whatever films are made across the globe, they love it with their heart, and they deserve to have their own IMAX.”

Varanasi is directed by S.S. Rajamouli and stars Mahesh Babu, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Prithviraj Sukumaran. The film is scheduled for a worldwide theatrical release on April 7, 2027.

Also Read: SS Rajamouli’s Varanasi first glimpse gets a roaring response at Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France