The Indian actioner of the year, if not the decade, is on course to getting a sequel.
S.S. Rajamouli, director of “RRR,” has confirmed to Variety that a story for the sequel is currently being worked out by his father, the screenwriter V. Vijayendra Prasad.
The “Baahubali” filmmaker discussed the sequel at a screening in Chicago over the weekend. “My father is the story writer for all my films. We discussed a bit about [‘RRR 2’] and he’s working on the story,” said Rajamouli.
Variety understands it’s too premature for any additional details about the project, which is believed to be in its very early stages.
“RRR,” one of the most expensive movie ever made out of India with a reported budget of $72 million, has had an incredible ride since its debut in March.
The Telugu-language historical fiction epic follows real-life 1920s Indian freedom fighters Komaram Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr., known as NTR Jr) and Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan), who in the film become fast friends united against a common enemy — the occupying, colonial British. The three-hour-plus pic is stuffed end-to-end with action choreography, stunt work, pyrotechnics and VFX, including one standout sequence in which Bheem unleashes tigers, leopards and other wild animals from a truck to attack the British.
“RRR” is the most recent entry from South India — which includes the Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam language industries — to upstage the more glamorous offerings out of Bollywood.
Back in April, NTR Jr. raised the spectre of an “RRR” sequel, suggesting it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility as writer Prasad had recently revealed to the Indian press.
“I’ve used the word franchise thinking, hoping that there would be another world of ‘RRR’ again,” said NTR Jr. “Sometimes [if] you just hope and you say a few words hoping it would happen, it will happen. It’s just a way of positive thinking, wanting for more.”
News of an “RRR” sequel was first reported by The Film Stage.