Billa Ranga Baashaa is #Kiccha46; to be two-part film?

Rangitaranga and Rajaratha fame Anup Bhandari wanted to work with Kiccha Sudeep on a thriller set in the future called Billa Ranga Baashaa. Sudeep was kicked about the script, but reckoned that it would be an expensive film to make, which meant that it needed a lot of careful planning in pre-production before going on floors. Anup, who had two other scripts ready at that point – Vikrant Rona and Ashwatthama – ran them by the actor, who decided to go with the first.

Throughout the promotions of Vikrant Rona, Sudeep said that he was looking at collaborating with Anup again. During the Chennai leg of the promotions, he had said that pre-production on Billa Ranga Baasha was on and had even tweeted once that he’d been putting on weight for his new project with the same director. As the months went by and there was no official word on what he’d do next, there was speculation that Sudeep may do a film with another filmmaker first and then return to work with Anup. The filmmaker had told OTTplay that Billa Ranga Baashaa would be announced after Sudeep was done with his commitments for the Celebrity Cricket League, but that it would go on floors only much later, which further fuelled rumours of an impending collaboration with either Nandakishore, Venkat Prabhu or even Cheran, for that matter. But then Anup got a solid 10 months since Vikrant Rona to work on the pre-prod of Billa Ranga Baashaa.

We have now heard that the June 1 announcement is going to be for Billa Ranga Baasha, after all. Netizens had wondered earlier why Sudeep took it upon himself to reveal that his next would get started next month, instead of a grand announcement by a production house. Apparently, Sudeep and Vikrant Rona producer Manjunath Gowda, will back the film. The duo, we hear, has set a Rs 100 crore+ budget for the film, which, interestingly, will be shot in two parts. With the story set in 2209 AD, it will have to be extensively shot on specially-designed sets. For Vikrant Rona, the actor-filmmaker duo had put up sets in Hyderabad and shot the entire film. Will they look for a repeat again? Official announcements are expected soon.