Anurag Kashyap has spent much of his career on Hindi cinema’s independent and genre-bending fringes. On the Hyderabad set of the Telugu film Kaaka, he is stepping into a different commercial grammar, opposite one of the south’s most recognisable stars.
Kashyap plays a significant antagonist in the Bobby Kolli-directed family action entertainer, which releases in theatres on January 13, 2027, during the Sankranti season. In an interview with Variety India, he described watching his co-star Chiranjeevi with open admiration, saying he was observing the actor ‘like a fanboy’ on set.
The megastar effect
Kashyap called Chiranjeevi ‘incredible’ and ‘inspiring’, praising a focus and sincerity that he said remain undimmed. ‘He is excited and enthused like it’s his first film,’ Kashyap said. He added that the veteran actor’s energy made him feel ‘much older’ than he is.
The comparison carries specific weight for Hindi cinema followers. Kashyap likened Chiranjeevi’s fitness to Anil Kapoor, his co-star in the meta-film AK vs AK. ‘Like Anil, Chiranjeevi sir makes me feel much older than I am,’ he said.
Why the crossover matters
This is not Kashyap’s first southern project: he previously appeared in the Telugu film Dacoit. Kaaka deepens a pattern in which Hindi filmmakers and actors are moving into Telugu mainstream productions not as novelty cameos but as working parts of the machinery.
For audiences who follow Hindi cinema closely, that matters. Kashyap is not claiming the Telugu mainstream is superior; he is describing a different discipline—one where star fitness, first-film enthusiasm and audience clarity are not treated as optional.
Kashyap also pointed to Chiranjeevi’s clarity about audience expectations, calling it amazing and saying the mainstream Telugu shoot was a ‘whole learning experience’ for him.
What the teaser revealed
The film’s teaser, released on Chiranjeevi’s birthday, introduced him as Satyam, a supervisor at Ammaji Aqua Industries. The setup is deliberately ordinary; the payoff is not.
- A key falls into a pool filled with shrimp at the farm.
- Satyam retrieves it with a giant electromagnet.
- The magnet also pulls weapons out of the water, hinting at hidden action.
That contrast—between a shrimp farm’s everyday surface and the arsenal beneath it—positions Kaaka as a family action entertainer built around Chiranjeevi’s star image.
The record
For Hindi cinema, the story is less about one interview than about continuity: an auteur known for Gangs of Wasseypur is now learning the rhythms of a different film industry while sharing the screen with one of its defining stars. Kaaka arrives January 13, 2027, and the fanboy remark suggests the collaboration is being taken seriously in both directions.
Source: The Times of India
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