I like to see larger-than-life drama: Rajamouli

Indian director S.S. Rajamouli’s films are all-singing, all-dancing spectacles -- and he is now a favourite to secure the first ever Oscar for an all-Indian film.

His three-hour extravaganza “RRR” is a fictionalised story of two colonial-era revolutionaries, filled with large-scale, visual effects-laden action sequences and musical numbers.

It has smashed box offices in India, wowed audiences from the United States to Japan, and is a front runner for the Best Original Song award at next month’s Oscars, having already beaten out Taylor Swift and Rihanna for the same prize at the Golden Globes.

“When I’m going to a movie, I would like to see larger-than-life characters, larger-than-life situations, larger-than-life drama,” Rajamouli told AFP.

“And that’s what I like to make,” he said at his office in the southern city of Hyderabad.

“Nothing holds the heroes back in delivering their action sequences.”

A word-of-mouth hit that has seen moviegoers dancing in cinema aisles, Telugu-language “RRR” has become one of the highest-grossing Indian movies ever.

India’s Hindi-language Bollywood cinema industry has long been known as the world’s most productive, but international film awards beyond the festival circuit have largely remained the preserve of English-language movies.

Now Rajamouli hopes a statuette for the dance number “Naatu Naatu” will pave the way for Indian auteurs to do the same.

“We are breaking ground, but I think we are in very, very initial, initial steps,” said the 49-year-old.

“If you see (South) Korea, for example, the kind of inroads that they have made... we should aspire to do that, all Indian film-makers.”

He was “pleasantly surprised” by the buzz around “RRR” in the West, he said, pointing to what he called a “lack of maximalist entertainment”.

“There’s a section of audiences who wanted that, a celebratory kind of engagement with the cinema.”

Despite appearing on Netflix only two months after it debuted across 1,200 US theatres in March last year, “RRR” has become among North America’s highest-grossing Indian films.

It was “unprecedented” and “a total outlier”, said analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research.

Audiences continue to flock to packed screenings for repeat viewings -- a January showing at Hollywood’s historic TCL Chinese Theatre sold out in 98 seconds.