S.S. Rajamouli doesn’t make small movies. He makes the kind of cinema that feels like it was constructed by a civilization rather than a crew—sprawling, mythic, emotionally enormous. RRR was a global phenomenon, the kind of word-of-mouth sensation that transcends languages and borders and turns a Telugu-language historical epic into an Oscar-winning cultural event. So when Rajamouli announced his next project, the world paid attention. And now, finally, we’re getting a glimpse of what he’s been building.
Two new stills from Varanasi have been released, timed to celebrate Priyanka Chopra‘s birthday on July 18. They show her as Mandakini, a character about whom almost nothing is known, and the images are already doing what Rajamouli’s visuals always do: raising more questions than they answer. Chopra looks regal, intense, and slightly otherworldly—the kind of presence that suggests her role in this story is going to be far more than a conventional leading lady.
Priyanka Chopra as Mandakini: The Scale of the Thing?
The details we have about Varanasi are deliberately sparse, but what’s been confirmed is enough to make clear that Rajamouli is thinking even bigger than RRR. The film spans thousands of years. It moves across locations around the globe—Antarctica, Africa, and the titular city of Varanasi in India. This is not a contained historical drama. This is something that reaches across time and geography in a way that Indian cinema has rarely attempted.
Mahesh Babu, one of the biggest stars in Telugu cinema, leads the cast. Alongside him are Chopra and Malayalam powerhouse Prithviraj Sukumaran, an actor whose recent work in Salaar and The Goat Life has made clear that he can hold the screen against anyone. The combination of these three, under Rajamouli’s direction, is the kind of casting that makes film festivals and streaming platforms sit up and take notice before a single frame has been screened.
And then there’s the music. M.M. Keeravani, the composer behind RRR‘s Oscar-winning “Naatu Naatu,” is returning to work on Varanasi. That’s not just a fun bit of continuity. Keeravani and Rajamouli have been collaborators for decades, and their partnership is one of the defining creative relationships in modern Indian cinema. The music in Rajamouli’s films isn’t background. It’s narrative architecture. Knowing Keeravani is scoring this film tells you that the emotional sweep is going to be just as ambitious as the visual scale.
Chopra’s Return to Indian Cinema?
Chopra has been busy. Since establishing herself as a global star with Quantico, Baywatch, The Matrix Resurrections, and Citadel, she’s spent years operating at the intersection of Hollywood and international production, building a career that no longer fits neatly into any single industry. But her return to Indian cinema carries a particular weight. This is the actor who gave us Barfi!, Fashion, Mary Kom, and Bajirao Mastani—performances that proved she could carry emotional complexity and star wattage simultaneously. Watching her step back into a project of this scale, with a director who knows how to use actors as mythic presences rather than just dramatic tools, feels like a homecoming.
Her comments about working with Rajamouli, made at Cannes Lions last month, give a sense of what the experience has been like. “He has complete and utter control on set,” she said. “You just come as an actor in with the weight of your character, which is also really freeing as you’re not thinking about the things you would as a producer.” That word—freeing—is telling. Chopra has spent years producing, managing, and building. Walking onto a Rajamouli set means surrendering all of that, trusting the vision of a director who has earned that trust across multiple films. For an actor who’s used to carrying the weight of production on her shoulders, that surrender might produce something remarkable.
The Mystery of Mandakini?
The name Mandakini is loaded with resonance. In Hindu mythology, the Mandakini is a sacred river, one of the tributaries of the Ganges, associated with purity and the divine. In popular culture, it’s a name that evokes the ethereal, the untouchable, the spiritually significant. Rajamouli doesn’t name characters casually. Everything in his films is layered with meaning, and the choice to call Chopra’s character Mandakini suggests she’s connected to something elemental—water, time, the sacred geography of Varanasi itself.
The stills released so far show her in what appears to be traditional attire, her expression poised between serenity and something sharper. There’s a knowingness in her gaze that suggests Mandakini is not simply a passive figure in this sprawling narrative. Whatever role she plays across the thousands of years the film covers, the first images imply she’s someone who understands more than she’s saying.
The Release Date and What Comes Next
Varanasi is set to open in theaters worldwide on April 7, 2027. That’s a long wait, but Rajamouli’s films have never been rushed. The production timeline for RRR was extensive, and the result was a film that felt meticulously crafted in every frame. The same patience is being applied here, and the early stills suggest the visual language is going to be just as ambitious as fans have come to expect.
The announcement of the first look also comes with the understanding that this is just the beginning of the marketing rollout. More images will follow. Trailers. Music releases. Rajamouli knows how to build anticipation, and the global audience he cultivated with RRR is waiting.
Chopra’s Next Steps
While Varanasi simmers on the horizon, Chopra isn’t slowing down. She’s attached to star in Reset, a survival thriller directed by Matt Smukler and written by Jordan Rawlins. The premise is immediate and gripping: a woman wakes up alone in the wilderness, days from civilization, with no memory of how she got there. Her only chance at survival is to trust a charming stranger, played by Orlando Bloom, who may not be who he claims to be. Production is expected to begin in August, and the role sounds like a sharp departure from the mythic grandeur of Varanasi—intimate, physical, psychologically tense.
It’s the kind of range Chopra has been building her entire career. From Bollywood musicals to Hollywood thrillers to global action franchises, she’s refused to be pinned down to any single mode. Varanasi and Reset, taken together, suggest an actor who’s still pushing herself into new territory. One film asks her to embody something timeless and archetypal. The other asks her to strip everything away and fight for survival with nothing but instinct and mistrust. That’s not a coincidence. That’s an artist who knows exactly what she’s doing.
The first look at Varanasi is just that—a look. But in Rajamouli’s hands, a single image can contain an entire world. The film is still nearly two years away from release, and the anticipation is already building. Priyanka Chopra as Mandakini is going to be one of the defining images of this production. The rest will have to wait. But for now, on her birthday, the gift was ours: a glimpse of something epic taking shape.