Thanos and wildlife. Star Wars and Indian mythology. Jungle and comic books. George Lucas and SS Rajamouli.
Rana Daggubati’s creative inspirations bridge East and West, nature and tech. He is Telugu and Indian cinema’s early adopter of next-gen ideas. A traditional storyteller with a futurist’s intuition. A tech geek and nature enthusiast.
Daggubati’s lineage is south cinema royalty – grandfather D. Rama Naidu and father Suresh Babu, pioneering film producers; uncle Venkatesh, matinee idol. But his original cinema craze was ignited by Star Wars. “In my eighth grade, my aunt took me to Disneyland in Orlando. I knew I was going to do that later in life – either build theme parks or make movies that can become theme parks.”
When he faced health battles early in life – corneal transplant and later a kidney transplant – he turned to more comic book courage. At a screening of Marvel’s Infinity War one evening in America, he had an epiphany. “Everyone died but Thanos wins. I was like, ‘that’s it, you have to go forward and figure out this life.’” A real-life “terminator” with steel mettle.
Daggubati acts all the time (Baahubali, Haathi Mere Saathi, Housefull 3) – his recent highlight, Rana Naidu, an Indian adaptation of US TV show Ray Donovan. But it’s behind the camera that he makes his biggest moves. His investments intersect with his core interests – animation, tech, stories, and comic books. Amar Chitra Katha. Spirit Media. Anthill Ventures.
The iconic Baahubali baddie’s most newsworthy foray is Ikonz, a Metaverse startup that has attracted capital from Village Global, which is backed by tech crème-de-la-crème – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg. The company’s mission as declared appears to be “bringing together advanced technologies and cultural icons to create a new era of interactive entertainment”. An entertainment future with AI Amitabh Bachchan? On the horizon, according to Ikonz.
AI, Daggubati believes, is about to bring a new cycle of disruption to cinema and he is ready for it. “The entertainment industry picks up any tech very quickly because it's constant creativity, you are trying to create what you imagine,” he says.
The bones of storytelling, though, remain timeless. “It’s just the means to monetise it, to advertise it, that changes. Today it is more and more immersive.” Tech can’t diminish cinema, he believes, instead it will only catapult its power ten times more. “Whatever I do, including business, technology, films, it’s all in service of telling the story in the best format possible. To shoot and create spectacle-based cinema, we need to understand tech.”
Actor. Entrepreneur. Experimenter. Risk-taker. Rana Daggubati will be at SYNAPSE to herald a new cinematic universe. Indian IP, international innovation. Will animated avatars eclipse real actors? Regenerative AI and reimagined cinema. Can Indian mythology spawn a Marvel-like cross-generational multiverse? Will this radical technology permanently render the ancient art of storytelling obsolete – or unleash its true and infinite superpower?
