Ram Gopal Verma is one of the biggest filmmakers in Bollywood. This Arian was born on April 7th 1962 in Andhra Pradesh to Krishnam Raju and mother Suryamma. Ram Gopal Verma is fondly called ‘Ramu’. As a kid, Ramu was very intelligent and studied engineering, but his passion for films would lead to him skip classes in college and watch movies.
Despite his parents insisting him to focus on academics, Ramu dropped out of college and went on to pursue a filmmaker’s career. Success didn’t come easy for this movie buff and he had to run a video shop to earn a living as his parents refused to support him.
Ramu got lucky when he got a break as an assistant director in SS creations in South and after two movies, Ramu scripted for ‘Shiva’. Ramu managed to convince South Superstar Nagarjuna to act in his movie, which became a blockbuster down South India. The movie success inspired the Producers to release a Hindi dubbed version, which did make an impact and also helped create a name for Ramu. Ramu continued to direct movies in the South and in 1992 he directed ‘Drohi’ for Boney Kapoor, which was a Hindi remake of a South superhit movie, which saw Nagarjuna and Urmila Matondkar in the lead.
In 1995, Ramu decided to start his own production banner and produced ‘Rangeela’ starring Aamir, Urmila and Jackie Shroff; the movie became a blockbuster.
After the success of ‘Rangeela’, Ramu started considering Urmila as his lucky mascot. This led him to cast her in his two forthcoming movies ‘Satya’ and ‘Daud’. ‘Satya’ was another path breaking successful production, which also got Ramu an entry in the league of top filmmakers of Bollywood. In 1998, Ramu joined hands with Mani Ratnam to produce ‘Dil Se’, but the movie did average. In 2000, Ramu gave actor Fardeen Khan his first hit ‘Jungle’ and 2002 saw the lauch of Vivek Oberoi in his movie based on the underworld titled ‘Company’. Although, it was a low budget movie, ‘Company’ went on to become one of the most successful hits of 2002.
After a movie on underworld, Ramu moved on to horror movies as he directed ‘Bhoot’. Initially, the filmmaker was criticized for venturing into the horror movie genre, which was considered to be a dead subject in Bollywood. Ramu however; revived the craze for horror movies with his masterpiece ‘Bhoot’, which had Urmila saw play the protagonist with Ajay Devgan in the male lead.
In 2005, Ram Gopal Verma directed the biggest star of Bollywood Big B and his son Abhishek Bachchan in ‘Sarkar’-a movie based on the life of Shivsena Supreme Bala Saheb Thackeray with traces of the famous ‘Godfather’. ‘Sarkar’ became one of the biggest hits of 2005. Big B was so impressed by Ram Gopal Verma’s creation that he insisted the filmmaker to make a sequel of the movie.
Ram Gopal Verma has also taken on the challenge to remake the biggest Bollywood movie ever ‘Sholay’. Ramu is considered to be a non-conformist filmmaker and has always portrayed the courage to attempt films that defy the stereotype. He is one creative and maverick filmmaker, who is known never to bow his head to commercial diktats.
