Rana Daggubati

Managing Director – Suresh Productions;
Partner – Amar Chitra Katha, Kwan and Anthill Ventures

To start it with Rana, the elder son of Suresh Babu, was more concerned about developing VFX facilities in the region by promoting his company Spirit Media than taking up a career in acting. With the kind of high end facilities at its disposal this firm has so far provided visual effects services to 70 films.

Functioning equally as a production house, Spirit Media supports valuable ventures that may not readily fit into a regimented market. Both these dimensions are made evident by the fact that if as a Visual Effects Producer, Rana won the State Nandi Award for Best Special Effects for Sainikudu (2006) then in the same year he received the National Film Award for co-producing an experimental venture like Bommalata – A Bellyful of Dreams (2006).

Being a tall and handsome young man it is inevitable that given Rana’s proximity to so many people in Tollywood and elsewhere sooner or later he would be offered a role in a film. He kept putting such opportunities away until he was offered the role of the central character in Sekhar Kammula’s Leader (2010). This turned out to be an ideal launch pad as it was produced by the legendary AVM Studios, Chennai. His debut in that sense happened in his own right and not through the production house to which he belongs. Once he won that year’s Filmfare award for the Best Male Debut for this film, his Bollywood introduction opposite Bipasha Basu followed in Rohan Sippy’s Dum Maaro Dum (2011). With that he became an instant rage among the younger audience. Subsequently he was voted as “The Most Promising Newcomer of 2011” in the TOI poll and was awarded the Best Male Debut Zee Cine Award for the same. Not stopping there in 2012, he was elected as the 10th most desirable man in India in a different poll conducted by TOI.

Building on further opportunities across the regions, Rana established his stardom not just in Telugu Cinema but in the Hindi and Tamil film industries acquiring a pan-Indian appeal rarely shared by any other actor. He made his Tamil debut with the Ajith Kumar feature Aarambam (2013) in the role of Asst. Commissioner Sanjay. In the interim he had featured as the lead in Krish’s Krishnamvande Jagadgurum (2012) another box office hit in Telugu. It is, however, the year 2013 that marked a major turning point in his acting career. The opportunity to play important roles in two blockbusters, Gunasekhar’s Rudhramadevi and S.S. Rajamouli’s Baahubali: The Beginning emerged. In the latter he was cast as the principal antagonist, Ballaldheva. When it became one of the highest-grossing films of 2015 it provided a greater platform for it’s sequel Baahubali: The Conclusion (2017) to break all records established until then. This was followed by Sankalp Reddy’s The Ghazi Attack (2017) which was simultaneously released in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil and its success further consoldiated Rana’s image as an All-India star. In Ravi Teja’s Nene Raju Nene Mantri (2017) that came soon after he appeared as a protagonist with ambiguous moral shades gaining more accolades in the process. Currently two big films featuring Rana are nearing completion, Prabhu Solomon’s Haathi Mere Sathi (2020), aka Kaadan in Tamil and Aranya in Telugu and Venu Udugala’s Virataparvam (2020). In the former he plays a proactive guardian of nature and in the latter the role of a legendary but stern leader of a rebel group. In the interim, since 2018, major preproduction work has been going on for Gunasekhar’s Hiranyakashyapa which is envisioned as a spectacular VFX blockbuster in the lines of Baahubali and in that Rana will play the title role of Hiranyakashipu.

Besides such engagements as an actor, as a producer and a businessman Rana’s entrepreneural vision is larger than the legacy he has inherited from his father and grandfather. In the realm of production, he hopes to push Suresh Productions beyond its prevailing horizon by way of greater presence both within the country and in the global market. His avowed goal in that direction is to create an entertainment universe like DC and Marvel. To make that possible, he has become an active partner in Amar Chitra Katha which is now under a new management. Thinking beyond his immediate concerns as a producer, he is equally interested in mobilizing celebrities and talents for cinematic and OTT ventures across the nation and beyond that for a series of consumer start ups. Thereby, if he has become a partner in KWAN a talent management company on the lines of CAA (Creative Artists Agency) of Hollywood then at the same time he is asking questions about how best these celebrities could be used to promote the brand value of a series of consumer start ups by way of his partnership in Anthill Ventures.

Amidst all these activities, as a member of the founding family, Rana’s concern and commitment to the growth of Ramanaidu Film School is no less in comparison to the rest of the ventures mentioned above.

Rana Daggubati

RFS

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