Leading producer Dil Raju completes 20 years in Tollywood today. On this date, in 2003, his maiden production, Dil, released and ended up as a huge blockbuster. The film was directed by VV Vinayak and it had Nithin and Neha in lead roles. The film’s success was so special for Dil Raju that the very title ‘Dil’ has been stuck as a prefix to his name since then.
After Dil, Dil Raju churned out numerous blockbusters with his shrewd script selection and business acumen and was thus called the man with the Midas touch. Arya, Bommarillu, Kotha Bangaru Lokam, Mr. Perfect, SVSC, Yevadu, DJ, Fidaa, and the F2 franchise are some of his popular movies in collaboration with top Tollywood stars like Mahesh Babu, Prabhas, NTR (Ramayya Vastavayya), Ram Charan, Allu Arjun, Pawan Kalyan (Vakeel Saab) and Venkatesh.
This year, Dil Raju successfully forayed into Kollywood with leading Tamil star Vijay’s Varisu during the Pongal season. Dil Raju also ventured into Bollywood with Jersey and HIT and F2 remakes. In his illustrious career spanning 2 decades, Dil Raju won several prestigious awards, including the National Award for Maharshi and Shatamanam Bhavathi, Nandi Awards for Bommarillu and Parugu, Filmfare Award for Bommarillu and several international awards for his latest release, Balagam.
Dil Raju had begun his film career as a distributor with the 1997 film Pelli Pandiri. He later launched his distribution house Sri Venkateswara Film Distributors in 1999 and went on to distribute numerous successful films in association with Sirish and Laxman. Dil Raju also has a strong grip in the Telugu film exhibition industry.
In a biggest contribution to Telugu Cinema, Dil Raju had introduced numerous talents who are in leading positions now. Directors like Sukumar, Boyapati Srinu, Bommarillu Bhaskar, Vamshi Paidipally, Sreekanth Addala, Venu Sriram and Venu Yeldandi are some of the popular names in Tollywood now. The star producer’s upcoming 50th film, Game Changer, is a pan-India biggie which is being directed by the maverick Shankar. The film has Ram Charan and Kiara Advani in lead roles.