On Friday, streaming media giant Netflix announced the cast of their much-awaited India original series Baahubali: Before The Beginning. As the title suggests itself, the digital series is a prequel to ace filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli’s epic films Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) and Baahubali: The Conclusion (2017).
The prequel will be based on the first book of a proposed trilogy, The Rise of Sivagami, by Anand Neelakantan. Popular television actress Mrunal Thakur, who was recently seen in critically acclaimed film Love Sonia (2018), has been roped in to play the titular matriarch Sivagami, a character immortalized by Ramya Krishnan. Actor Rahul Bose has been signed on to play Skandadasa. Besides Mrunal Thakur and Rahul Bose, the cast also boasts the presence of Atul Kulkarni, Vaquar Shaikh, Jameel Khan, Siddharth Arora, and Anup Soni.
Baahubali: Before The Beginning will be set fifty years before the first movie and seventy-five years before the second. It will predominantly revolve around the character of Sivagami. Talking about the character, producer Prasad Devineni, said that the series will dig deeper into the powerful character while expanding the series back-story and introducing new characters and locations.
"We grew up watching a lot of Hollywood films by a lot of auteurs and that gave us our start," Katta said at the event. "It's about making it more experiential, that's the vision of the story."
Netflix has joined forces with the team behind Baahubali, including Arka Media Works and director S.S. Rajamouli.
Baahubali: Before The Beginning is most likely to premiere in 2019 on Netflix.
