As per the records, Vishwambhara VFX budget is around ₹130 crore. It makes this Chiranjeevi starred and Vassishta directed movie stand apart in Telugu movie industry. It is a gigantic bet on visual effects that can change how Indian films use technology to enhance storytelling. But, on a negative side, it is facing so many problems – production delays, rising cost, low level trailer.
The question is – Will this gamble pay off?
What it Vishwambhara?
Literal meaning of Vishwambhara is ‘The Universe’.
When director Mallidi Vassishta announced Vishwambhara in 2023, he promised something never seen before in Telugu cinema. The news became public on 22nd August 2023, Chiranjeevi’s birthday. The director hinted that he is fusing ancient Indian mythological story with futuristic worlds. The movie is being produced by UV Creations.
It got an early controversy of being a sequel of Jagadeka Veerudu Athiloka Sundari (1990), which was denied by Vassishta’s tweet.
This movie is said to be the most ambitious movie project of the Megastar Chiranjeevi. At the age of 69, he is trying hard to scale it on an epic level. We have seen grand visuals in Mallidi’s Bimbisara (2022). By this time, the duo has promised to surpass that.
In Vishwambhara movie, Chiranjeevi is portrayed as a devotee of Lord Hanuman. It promises for larger than life scale of the said film project.
Vishwambhara VFX
As per the screenplay of Vishwambhara, nearly 70% of the film needs complex VFX work. In totality, it’s around two hours of CGI, to be integrated in this live action movie. To put that in perspective, Baahubali 2 used VFX for about 90 minutes.
All these hype went for a toss, when the Vishwambhara trailer got live on YouTube. From majority of audience, it got backlash. People didn’t like the visuals. There was no esthetic blend of Animation and Visual Effects with shooting plates. Many people commented on social media that it looks like a low budget gameplay. Even many CGI sequences looks like they are copied from Avatar, Infinity War and other Hollywood movies. Netizens also compared it to WhatsApp stickers.
Later on, the team admitted that they rushed the teaser before finishing real VFX work. Mallidi Satyanarayana Reddy, Director’s father, reported that they used AI generated visuals, because Vishwambhara VFX was not completed by that time, even after the post production studio has timeframe of 6 months.
Facing this criticism, Mallidi and Chiranjeevi were forced to reshoot. It added an extra VFX budget of 20 crores on key action scenes and songs. Their goal is to create an immersive world, to blend mythology and futuristic elements. At the same time, the team also reduced 5 crores from marketing budget.
To achieve the high quality VFX and enhance CGI appeal, some work has been outsourced to the Visual Effect studio, that worked on James Cameron’s Avatar 2. From this news, you can understand the complexity of the visual effects work. Apart from it, the work has been distributed to many other studios.
Conclusion
We hope that the vision of Mallidi Vassishta comes alive in a proper manner. If done good, it will be a great push up for Tollywood, and in turn for our entire Indian Film Industry.
Vishwambhara has already seen postpones. It was initially scheduled by Sankranthi 2025. From there, it went to May 2025. But, the movie is still in post production studio pipeline. As per the latest update, the release date will be announced as they finish the entire VFX work.
Great VFX needs a proper time. If it is rushed, the output always looks cringy. We would not like this movie to end up like Adipurush (2023) and Saaho (2019), which were a box office bomb.