After S.S. Rajamouli brought Tollywood to a global audience with the success of Oscar-winning epic RRR back in 2022, the Indian director is back working on an even bigger film called Varanasi with Priyanka Chopra Jonas. CinemaBlend was among a select press invited to check out the big practical set built for Varanasi, we got to set foot on one key set that was built from the ground up in Hyderabad, India specifically for what’s being called one of India’s most expensive films.
Check out everything we learned about the production with these fun facts:
S.S. Rajamouli Completely Recreated A Famed Indian Temple For Varanasi
I had a chance to visit the Varanasi set back in November in the same week S.S.R. unveiled the movie’s first trailer in front of over 40k fans and a wildly big 100 by 132 foot screen. The title “Varanasi” itself, is named after the spiritual capital of India, so as you can imagine quite a bit of the movie will depict the city. Since it would have apparently been a “nightmare” to film on location, Rajamouli set his sights on recreating the ancient city for the film. Check out this model and plans we were shown on set of what’s been built for the film:
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The movie specifically recreated the famed Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple across nine acres of land in the heart of the city of Hyderabad. We were told it cost $2.5 million to build it across three to four months, and this is no flimsy set. It truly felt like I was walking on an ancient temple, and as they told us, it was built out of concrete, and should be able to stand for three years. After seeing the set, Rajamouli told us this in our exclusive interview with the filmmaker:
I should give a lot of credit to our production designer Mohan [Bingi]. I mean, he went there multiple times, and he captured I would say thousands and thousands of photographs in different angles, different lighting conditions during the floods, during the dry season, like he was capturing and looking at them, watching them closely seeing, and he knows the story, obviously, and [was] trying to envision which part of Varanasi [to recreate], because Varanasi is a huge ancient city.
We can’t imagine all the measuring and planning that went into this. When we were on set, the production was getting ready to shoot in December/January. We were told it was going to be used for four scenes of drama and a big action scene with hand-to-hand combat and guns.
The Cool Way The Practical Set Can Be Reused For Multiple Scenes
One exciting element of Varanasi is that it will span multiple time periods, and being on the set definitely allowed us to see one way the production is doing so. The Ratneshwar Mahadev Temple has been around for around 200 years, and we were told that some of the scenes being shot there will be from the present day, and some will be in the past. When we saw it, it was set-dressed for the present day, with one poster advertising for an event in 2028. The famous leaning temple can be brought up 12.5 feet higher to depict how it originally looked. How cool is that?
How The Huge Set Is Being Kept Under Wraps
One quick question that came up as we gazed upon the set was how Varanasi planned to keep the secret of the set. The people we spoke to on set said all sorts of properties were actually built while they were constructing the set, and they’d have to build barricades in order to keep things underwraps. Here’s what Rajamouli told us:
Doesn't work very well. I mean, constantly guarding your sets, your actors, and half the energy goes into taking the care that nothing goes leak. It's a massive security exercise, which all of us hate to do. But what we have to do, we would rather want to put all our mind and efforts on creative issues rather than security issues. But yeah, that's how it is. And we have to live with it.
On top of that, they have to plan for the likes of Priyanka Chopra Jonas and another huge star in India, Mahesh Babu to be on set as well. One of the reasons why Varanasi is such a big deal is because it's Chopra Jonas’s first Indian movie in years.
Where Else Is Varanasi Being Shot
The Varanasi set we got to visit was awesome, but it’s one of many that’s being used for the movie. The cast also filmed a portion of it in Kenya, where Chopra Jonas compared filming to The Lion King. The film’s cast were filmed alongside a ton of wild animals there, which will be awesome to see on the big screen. It’s great to hear about some of the practical elements of the movie, because a good portion of the movie has been filmed in front of green and blue screens as well. Here’s what Chopra Jonas had to say about having these two types of sets on Varanasi:
For us as actors, playing within that obviously is so much easier to like, to imagine when you are on a practical set. But, his clarity is also incredible the way he explains when we are across a blue screen too, you know, exactly like what you're gonna be looking at and, but I couldn't imagine the gravity and the scale of it till I saw the first look either. But I think the complimenting of the practical set along with visual effects is what is really special about his movies.
Varanasi’s release date has officially been announced to be hitting theaters on April 7, 2027. It was shot for IMAX, so this is definitely the kind of movie we’ll be running to see in the cinemas.
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