Rana Daggubati Reveals Rs 400 Crore Was Borrowed For Baahubali From Banks At 24 Per Cent Interest

SS Rajamouli’s 'Baahubali' was a landmark film and started the dominance of South Indian films in the Indian entertainment industry.

Baahubali starring Rana Daggubati and Prabhas was a blockbuster at the box office.

Source : IMdB

New Delhi: SS Rajamouli’s 'Baahubali' was a landmark film and started the dominance of South Indian films in the Indian entertainment industry. The film starring Rana Daggubati and Prabhas was a blockbuster at the box office. Rana recently revealed that the makers of the film were under a lot of financial pressure as it was a big-budget movie. He revealed that the money invested in the film was taken from banks at very high-interest rates. 

In a recently held event, Rana shared that for the first part of Baahubali, the makers had borrowed over Rs 180 crore at 24 per cent interest over five and a half years. He also shared that a few years back, the filmmakers in the Telugu film industry use to make films by either keeping their house or their property pledged to a bank and they used to pay around 24-28 per cent interest for the money taken. 

“Three-four years ago, where was money in the movies coming from? It was either their (filmmaker’s) house or their property that was pledged to bank, made on interest, and it comes back. We used to pay around 24-28 per cent interest. That’s the borrowing in films. For a film like Baahubali, it was a borrowing of Rs 300-400 crore at that interest,” he said at the India Today conclave. 

“Part 1 was a struggle. We spent twice over the highest collected film in Telugu. So no math ever made justification of what we borrowed, how we made it. It was 180 crore plus borrowed at 24 per cent interest over five-and-a-half years. We shot a little bit of Baahubali 2 as well, so if this film didn’t work, we didn’t know what will happen,” he added.

Speaking about nepotism in the film industry, he said that people from the industry have an advantage over any common person but it is also natural to expect someone from a filmy family to carry forward the legacy of their family. 

“People in the world of film families might not be great actors, but they’ll be great agents. It’s because everybody knows everybody. It’s like every other industry, it's the people you know. If three generations of your family worked hard to build something and if you are not going to scale that… It’s your responsibility. You are called somebody who is not doing things right in your family. It’s like if the son doesn’t do better than the father, the son is bad. That’s a regular thing,” he said at the conclave. 

Rana was last seen in the Netflix web series ‘Rana Naidu’.