The Paradise's Nani is going action-heavy. But can Natural Star remain family hero?

At The Paradise pre-release event, Nani addressed questions about his run of action films. His reply framed the shift as a phase, with a different film promised after Bloody Romeo.

In Short

• Nani shifts to intense action with The Paradise releasing September 24
• Dasara marked his first rough-edged role, earning Rs 120 crore globally
• Hi Nanna balanced the shift with family themes, also successful

Nani didn’t become the “Natural Star” by looking like one. He became one by making himself familiar. For years, his biggest strength was the sense that the man on screen could be someone you knew — the slightly awkward lover, the ordinary middle-class son, the flawed husband, the father trying to hold his family together. His films found their emotional pull not in larger-than-life heroism, but in recognition and familiarity. Audiences didn’t just watch Nani; they saw a version of themselves in him.

That connection, particularly with family audiences, became central to his stardom. From Ala Modalaindi and Pilla Zamindar to Bhale Bhale Magadivoy, Middle Class Abbayi and Hi Nanna, Nani carved out a space that was distinct from the traditional Telugu hero. He could headline a film without having to look larger-than-life in every frame, making romance, humour, vulnerability and everyday relationships feel like star material.

It’s why the “Natural Star” tag stuck — less as a marketing label than as a description of what audiences saw in him. Ashta Chamma, Bhale Bhale Magadivoy and Krishna Gaadi Veera Prema Gaadha worked because Nani felt accessible; like someone from the audience’s own world rather than someone placed above it.

But that equation has been tested over the past three years. With The Paradise, releasing September 24, Nani is leaning deeper into action, intensity and scale than ever before.

The pivot, film by film

The shift didn't happen overnight. Dasara (2023) was the first crack — Nani playing a coal-belt brawler with a drinking problem and a temper, a world away from his rom-com or family-friendly comfort zone. It worked, pulling in over Rs 120 crore worldwide and proving audiences would accept him rough-edged. Hi Nanna, released the same year, briefly pulled him back toward familiar territory — fatherhood, loss, gentleness which made him embrace the family-hero tag — and did solid business too, suggesting the two Nanis could coexist.

Then the balance tipped. Saripodhaa Sanivaaram (2024) cast him as a vigilante who metes out justice with his fists every Saturday. HIT: The Third Case (2025) put him behind a cop's badge investigating serial murders, and became his biggest opener yet. Both were hits — HIT 3 alone crossed Rs 120 crore. But, HIT 3 went a step ahead and showcased him as a ruthless police officer who is sharp-tongued.

And now The Paradise, releasing September 24, goes further still: Nani as a rebel fighting for his tribe's land, with what he himself has called the "rawest and most rustic action" of his career.

Three films. Three variations of the same brief: hit hard, hit often.

Nani knows exactly what this looks like

At The Paradise's pre-release event, someone finally asked him outright: why does he keep doing action films, and whether he had forgotten the family audience that built his career? Nani didn't get defensive. "Frankly speaking, I never follow trends," he said, adding, "I understand your concern. Wherever I go, people have that question."

He pointed to his own track record as the rebuttal. After Dasara, he made Hi Nanna — and, in his words, "people got the clarity almost immediately." Now, with HIT 3, The Paradise and Bloody Romeo lined up next, he's aware the pattern reads differently: "Everyone thinks that I've gone to 'that side.'" His answer was blunt. "Nani will never go that way. I will always come back with something different than the previous film."

He even teased what comes after Bloody Romeo — unannounced for now, but enough, he said, to give "everyone full clarity" once it's out.

It's a considered answer, not a dodge. Nani isn't denying the pivot — he's arguing it's cyclical, not permanent, and that Hi Nanna is proof he always swings back.

What's driving the shift

Some of this is just the market. Telugu cinema's biggest recent successes — from Pushpa to Kalki 2898 AD to Salaar — have been built on mass, scale and spectacle. An actor who spent a decade being liked for being relatable was never going to be immune to that gravitational pull, especially past 40, when the industry starts asking its heroes to prove they can still open a film wide.

There's also a subtler career logic. Nani has never had the conventional hero physicality — the pivot to action lets him compete on a different axis: intensity, grit, physical transformation, the visible effort of "toughest film of my career" narratives that generate their own press cycle. It's a way to stay commercially central without pretending to be something he visually isn't.

And it's working, on paper. Four films in a row — Hi Nanna, Dasara, Saripodhaa Sanivaaram, HIT 3 — have been box office successes, making him one of Tollywood's more dependable performers at a moment when star power alone isn't guaranteeing hits for bigger names. While three of these four films are mass actioners, they weren't typical ones. They offered something different. In fact, Nani took that risk and gamble to provide something novel even within the commercial realm.

The risk

But consistency at the box office isn't the same as image security. Nani's fanbase didn't attach to him because he could throw a punch — plenty of actors can do that. They loved him because he made ordinariness charming, because his romances felt lived-in, and his comic timing did the heavy lifting other heroes needed muscle for. That's a harder thing to protect than an opening-day number.

The gamble with The Paradise is specific: this isn't just an action film, but the most extreme version yet of Nani stripped of the qualities that made him "natural" in the first place — the drama is bigger, the violence rawer, the register more mass than anything he's attempted. If it lands, it confirms he can hold both identities. If audiences start experiencing the action films as generic rather than distinctively his, the Natural Star tag starts to look like nostalgia rather than a working description.

Can he have both?

Nani's own framing — that the action run is a phase he'll deliberately break, the way Hi Nanna broke Dasara — suggests he sees this less as a reinvention than a rotation, alternating registers rather than abandoning one for the other. His upcoming slate backs it up: reports point to a film with director Venky Atluri and another with Naga Vamsi's Sithara Entertainments after Bloody Romeo, and Nani himself has hinted at a further project after that he isn't ready to name.

The real test isn't whether he can keep making action films — the box office has already answered that. It's whether the "something different" he's promised actually arrives before the Natural Star tag starts to look like a memory rather than a working description. The Paradise is Nani betting the pendulum still swings. Telugu cinema will find out starting September 24 — and, more tellingly, whatever comes right after.

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