On Monday, however, the collections for Adipurush showed a significant dip. In Hindi, Box Office India reported collections had fallen by 75% while in the Telugu states, Kodela put the figure at around 66%.
Prabhas, who became a massive star after Baahubali, plays the lead role of Raghav in Adipurush, and the film took a big opening in the Telugu states which have a long history of making mythological films. From NT Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageswara Rao to Shoban Babu, Balayya and Jr NTR, several stars have played mythological heroes in their careers. SS Rajamouli’s epic action drama film RRR (2022) also reimagined two real life revolutionaries – Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem – as mythological heroes Ram and Bheem.
In fact, in recent times, Rajamouli’s brand of storytelling with its outrageous leaps in imagination, has become the standard for films of this genre that come with a large canvas. The Telugu audience, in particular, compares every such film with Rajamouli’s work. For instance, veteran director Mani Ratnam’s two-part historical fiction film Ponniyin Selvan (2022, 2023) was a blockbuster in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. It did average business in the Hindi belt, but was rejected in the Telugu states, with many Telugu viewers comparing the film unfavourably with Rajamouli’s Baahubali movies (2015, 2017).