No star bigger than film’s success: Prabhas

The phenomenal success of S.S, Rajamouli’s Baahubali, which has emerged as India’s biggest blockbuster, has made its lead actor Prabhas realise something very important — that the success of any film should be attributed to its team and not to the star. “This success has taught me that a star alone can’t be credited for a film’s success, which is usually achieved by a team. No star is bigger than the success of a film,” Prabhas told in an interview.

The success of Baahubali, according to the 35-year-old actor, belongs to every last member of the team who worked tirelessly to ensure a smooth release. “Firstly, it’s not easy to make a film on such a grand scale. The bigger challenge nowadays is to take a film to the theatres. In our case, we didn’t face any difficulty in releasing, which was only possible because of meticulous planning and team work,” he said.

Despite appreciations pouring in from all quarters for his performance, Prabhas doesn’t consider himself a national star yet. “It felt nice when stars like Ranbir Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan appreciated my performance. Rajinikanth sir called and congratulated me. Such things have never happened before. I’m glad I’m popular, people recognise wherever I go, but it’s too early to be called a national star,” he said.

Released in multiple languages, the film earned over Rs.600 crore at the ticket window and even successfully completed 100 days of run in select theatres in the country last week. Although Prabhas admits they wanted the film to succeed, he says they never anticipated this kind of response.

“When a film of this scale is made, you want it to be a blockbuster because mere success won’t help the producers recover money. What surprised us the most was that the film did extremely well in Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam too,” said Prabhas, who’d like to thank Rajamouli the most for this success.

Unlike other stars, Prabhas says he’s not under pressure to deliver minimum of two films a year. He spent nearly two years on the first part of the film and may spend another year on part two.

“Even if I was required to spend four years, I’d have happily worked. An opportunity such as this you get once in a lifetime and it’d be stupid to jeopardize it,” he signs off.