Akkineni Nagarjuna & Vennela Kishore Movies Together List — 5 Films

The shape of the work

The 2010s account for 80% of everything they made together. The 2010s belonged to Soggade Chinni Nayana; the 2020s to Bangarraju. Akkineni Nagarjuna acted in every film; Vennela Kishore acted in all of them. Strictly Telugu cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Nagarjuna personally called Vennela Kishore to offer him the role in Soggade Chinni Nayana (2016) after seeing his comedy timing in a small YouTube skit. Kishore later said he almost deleted the call thinking it was a prank.
• In Devadas (2018), Nagarjuna deliberately slowed down his dialogue delivery in every scene with Kishore so Kishore's rapid-fire punchlines would land harder. Kishore admitted in an interview that Nagarjuna's patience made him look funnier.
• On the sets of Raju Gari Gadhi 2 (2017), Nagarjuna and Kishore started a running bet: whoever flubbed a line first had to buy the entire crew ice cream. Kishore lost 4 days in a row and still jokes about the ₹12,000 bill.
• Their comic pairing in Manmadhudu 2 (2019) directly inspired director Kalyan Krishna to write a full-length comedy track for them in Bangarraju (2022) — a track that became the most-shared clip from the film on social media.
• "Nagarjuna garu treats me like I'm his younger brother on set. He'll whisper 'slow down, let them laugh first' before every take. I've never had a co-star who cares about my timing that much." — Vennela Kishore, in a 2022 interview with The Hindu.
• In Soggade Chinni Nayana (2016), Nagarjuna played a straight-faced godman while Kishore played his panicked sidekick. Nagarjuna insisted Kishore improvise all his lines — the result was Kishore's first-ever solo comedy track that ran 8 minutes in the final cut.