Rajamouli’s Epic 9,200-Year History Film Set in Varanasi

Right now, somewhere in Hyderabad’s open land, a 7,000-year-old city is under construction.

Not a CGI render. Not a green screen. A full-sized, physical replica of ancient Varanasi — built brick by brick, scaled down by about 30%, for S. S. Rajamouli’s next film.

And that’s just the set. The production has also taken its cameras to Odisha, Kenya, and — in a historic first — Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, making Varanasi one of the most geographically ambitious shoots in Indian cinema history. It is, in fact, the first Indian film ever to shoot in Antarctica, and only the fourth film in the world to do so. The entire film has also been shot for IMAX — making it not just one of the most ambitious Indian productions ever, but a landmark in the format’s global history. Every frame of that ambition will breathe at the scale it deserves.

But geography isn’t even the most staggering number attached to this project. That honour belongs to the budget: ₹1,400 crore (approximately $168 million USD) — what The Indian Express has called Indian cinema’s most expensive gamble ever.

The Director Who Made the World Pay Attention

Before we get to what Rajamouli is building, it’s worth understanding why the world is watching him build it.

In 2022, a Telugu-language film called RRR did something that almost never happens: it crossed every language barrier, every cultural wall, and landed on global stages that Indian cinema had never reached before. Critics who had never watched a South Indian film were writing essays about it. Audiences who couldn’t read the subtitles fast enough were watching it twice.

Rajamouli didn’t stumble into that moment. He engineered it — through scale, emotion, and a filmmaker’s instinct for what makes people lean forward in their seats. RRR didn’t just perform well; it announced that Indian storytelling, told at full ambition, could compete with anything made anywhere in the world. The film’s global reach was further underscored in 2026, when Varanasi made its international debut at CCXP Mexico 2026 — following directly in RRR‘s record-breaking footsteps.

That’s the context behind every headline about Varanasi. When Rajamouli commits to a project, the question isn’t whether people will watch. The question is: how far is he willing to go this time?

Rajamouli himself has stated that Varanasi is five to six times larger in scale than RRR — his own three-hour historical epic. Let that sink in for a moment. The answer, apparently, is across multiple eras — spanning all the way from 7,200 BCE through to 2071, weaving through global catastrophes, asteroid threats, and a race to prevent civilisational collapse. Rajamouli has cited both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata — foundational texts of Hindu mythology — as direct inspiration for the film, and that influence runs straight to the heart of its casting.

The film was co-written by Rajamouli alongside his father and longtime collaborator V. Vijayendra Prasad, the same partnership that shaped Baahubali and RRR. Music for the epic is composed by M. M. Keeravani, another trusted member of Rajamouli’s creative circle, whose score for RRR won an Academy Award in 2023.

At the centre of it all is Mahesh Babu in a dual role: playing both the hero Rudhra and his ancient counterpart across civilisations. Joining him is Priyanka Chopra, marking a landmark collaboration between Bollywood’s most globally recognised face and Indian cinema’s most ambitious director. Prithviraj Sukumaran rounds out the principal cast, adding yet another powerhouse performer to a production that seems constitutionally incapable of thinking small.

Varanasi is scheduled for theatrical release on 7 April 2027 — a date that, given everything attached to this film, already feels like a cultural event in the making.