India, Oct. 30 -- The Beginning (2015) and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017) are getting a glitzy makeover as Baahubali: The Epic, hitting screens on October 31. The epic saga that introduced Prabhas to the world as a larger-than-life and gravity-defying warrior changed the face of Indian cinema in more ways than one. Annapurna Studios CTO CV Rao, the man behind the transformation of two films into a 3 hours and 44 minutes-long spectacle, talks to Hindustan Times about what went into making, what he calls a 'celebration of cinema'.

Rao tells me that compressing two films into one was no mean feat, particularly when even something as the post-production workflow looked completely different to what it does now, a decade ago. "The producer...