Mastermind SS Rajamouli dropped a massive update on his upcoming project Varanasi, calling it his most ambitious movie yet. Talking on The Empire podcast, the filmmaker opened up about why this project feels so personal. Having grown up on Indian epics across languages, he bluntly admitted, “I was never satisfied.”
Even though he loved plenty of classic mythological films, he feels the screen has never done justice to the original texts. As he put it, “the way the epics are written and the way they are shown on screen, the scale doesn’t match.” That gap bugged him for years until he finally turned the question on himself: “Now what are you going to do? How are you going to show them?”
That self-imposed challenge is basically the foundation of Varanasi, sending expectations through the roof for fans. The Mahesh Babu-starrer is being mounted on an enormous canvas, eyeing an April 7, 2027 theatrical release.
Produced by KL Narayana and SS Karthikeya, the globetrotting adventure also stars Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Prithviraj Sukumaran, and Prakash Raj, with MM Keeravani handling the music.