Manisha Mishra
S S Rajamouli’s magnum opus ‘Bahubali 2 – The Conclusion’ released on 28th April 2017 in over 9,000 screens and four languages – Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam garnered unprecedented attention and love. It seemed the nation wanted to know ‘Why did Katappa kill Bahubali’?
Apart from the conventional promotion mediums, the social media craze for the movie is being touted as one of the prime reasons for the soaring ticket sales and the consequential record breaking spree of the movie in terms of profit. The quintessential question WKKB or ‘Why Katappa killed Bahubali’ become a topic of intense discussion across Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and many more platforms where the users range from common man to executives, businessmen to bureaucrats and even students to housewives. Thus it shows how a regional film got mobilization through social media and is discussed globally.
A twitter post read “People can finally sleep in peace, as they know that why Katappa killed Bahubali”. The film used hypnotizing visual effects which caught the people’s imagination. Each and every scene including the set was mind blowing and stunning. It was a U/A rated movie meant for all ages.
Lots of brands across categories partnered with the franchise and launched their own offers with the movie name thus pushing sales of their products and promoting the film. As the data usage through smart phones had become cheap and easily accessible in last few months, information about every minute thing reaches far and wide which resulted in creating hype towards this film. Almost everybody in the global sphere began talking about the movie and the eagerness of people was evident in YouTube where millions of users watched the promotional clips. In fact, sarees with the movie posters were out and these pictures were widely circulated through social media.
The pre-release buzz was so intense that when Bahubali 2 released, people were celebrating their happiness by pouring milk on life-sized cut outs of the star ‘Prabhas’ – much the same way as fans celebrate a Rajinikant film. Audiences all over praised the grandeur and the good trumps over evil theme of the movie. Social media was abuzz with testimonials further promoting the word of mouth success of the film. Hence it can be easily concluded that social media proved to be a driving force behind the roaring success of ‘Bahubali 2 – The Conclusion’.
