Applause Entertainments, the studio that brought Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story on the screen, will be producing the upcoming bilingual series on the life of Ramalinga Raju, the former chairman and CEO of Satyam Computer Services, which will be directed by Nagesh Kukunoor.
The entertainment studio shared the announcement of greenlighting the biopic thriller through a press release.
The biopic series is based on the book The Double Life of Ramalinga Raju by Kingshuk Nag which was published in 2009. The book is based on Satyam Computer Services which was one of the leading IT firms in India from the 90s up to the early 2000s. The story focuses on Ramalinga’s endeavour to make Satyam Computer Services, the most successful IT company in India, eventually leading to its sudden collapse.
Ramalinga is one of the accused in what is widely known as the ‘Satyam Scandal’ after he stepped down from his position admitting to a large amount of money laundering. In 2015, he was convicted of corporate fraud which led to the collapse of Satyam Computers along with his brother.
The upcoming biopic marks the second collaboration of National Award-winning director Kukunoor with Applause Entertainments, after the former directed the 2019 Hotstar Specials City Of Dreams, a mystery crime series.
With the second biopic in store, Sameer Nair, the Applause Entertainment CEO, said: “Viewers are intrigued by biopics. Stories of real people and what they’ve done are always fascinating to watch. Also, many have witnessed this story unfold in front of their eyes, through the medium of news. Thus, to be able to get an insider view is definitely an exciting prospect for the viewers. We are pleased to once again collaborate with director Nagesh Kukunoor who will be helming this project for us. An engineer turned filmmaker who hails from the very land this story comes from, Nagesh is uniquely positioned to understand the nuances and direct this series.”
The upcoming series is going to be the 12th Applause Entertainments show to stream on SonyLIV.
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According to a report by The Times of India, in September 2020, a Hyderabad Court restrained Netflix from streaming an episode on Ramalinga in its docu-series Bad Boy Billionaires, an investigative docuseries that “explores the greed, fraud and corruption that built up– and ultimately brought down– Indian’s most infamous tycoons” including Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Subrata Roy and Ramalinga.