Two revolutionaries who never met in life become best friends and brothers-in-arms in Rajamouli's fever-dream of history. RRR turned that invention into the most successful cultural export modern Indian cinema has produced.
RRR, released on 25 March 2022, is a Telugu-language epic period action drama directed by S. S. Rajamouli, who co-wrote the screenplay with V. Vijayendra Prasad, and produced by D. V. V. Danayya under DVV Entertainment. N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan star as fictionalised versions of real revolutionaries Komaram Bheem and Alluri Sitarama Raju, imagined meeting in 1920s Delhi under the British Raj. Ajay Devgn, Alia Bhatt, Shriya Saran, Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody and Olivia Morris fill out the cast. The title is an abbreviation of Rajamouli, Ram Charan and Rama Rao.
The production was as maximal as the premise. Announced in March 2018, principal photography began in November 2018 in Hyderabad, weathered pandemic delays, and concluded in August 2021, with additional sequences filmed in Ukraine and Bulgaria. M. M. Keeravani composed the songs and score, K. K. Senthil Kumar shot it, Sabu Cyril designed the production and V. Srinivas Mohan supervised the visual effects. Made on a budget of 550 crore rupees, RRR was the most expensive Indian film at the time of its release.
Commercially, it detonated on contact. RRR earned 223 crore rupees worldwide on its first day, then the highest opening-day figure for an Indian film, and became the first Indian film released in the Dolby Cinema format. It finished with a worldwide gross of 1,300 to 1,387 crore rupees, the highest-grossing Indian film of 2022 and among the highest-grossing Indian films ever. In its home market of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana it remains the highest-grossing film of all time, with over 406 crore rupees.
Then came the second life no Indian blockbuster had lived before. Western audiences and critics embraced the film through streaming and repertory screenings, and the National Board of Review named RRR one of the ten best films of the year, only the second non-English-language film ever to make that list. At the 80th Golden Globes it won Best Original Song, the first Indian and first Asian winner in the category, and it added Best Foreign Language Film and Best Song at the 28th Critics' Choice Awards. At home, the 69th National Film Awards gave it six prizes, including Best Popular Feature Film.
At the centre of the phenomenon stood one song. Naatu Naatu, composed by Keeravani with lyrics by Chandrabose and vocals by Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava, took over 19 months to produce, with Keeravani writing 10 to 20 candidate tunes for the scene. Choreographer Prem Rakshith devised 110 different moves in search of the hook step that eventually swept the internet. Rajamouli wanted choreography that would look spectacular in tandem yet remain simple enough for anyone to copy.
The sequence itself carries an eerie historical footnote. Naatu Naatu was filmed in August 2021 at the Mariinskyi Palace in Kyiv, the official residence of the president of Ukraine, mere months before the Russian invasion. The shoot took 15 days and featured around 50 dancers and several hundred extras. On screen, the number is a duel: two colonised men out-dancing an entire British garden party into the ground.
On 12 March 2023, at the 95th Academy Awards, Naatu Naatu won the Oscar for Best Original Song, the first song from an Asian film to do so, making RRR the first Indian feature film to win an Academy Award. The moment reframed how the world maps Indian cinema, pulling Telugu filmmaking to the centre of the global conversation. RRR proved that Indian mass spectacle did not need to translate itself to travel. It only needed to be seen.
Compiled from public records and awards archives.
