Chakravarthy Ramachandra

Biography:

Chakravarthy Ramachandra is an Indian film producer who has worked on films in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam. He began his career as an independent producer before becoming the CEO of YNOT Studios.

Chakravarthy Ramachandra made his film debut as a supporting actor in the Telugu comedy film Mr. Errababu (2005), where he also served as the film’s line producer, after graduating from the London Film Academy in 2005. Ramachandra launched his maiden project under the Ideaz project name in December 2005, with Shashank and Rajeev Kanakala cast in the major parts. The project, which was also directed by a debutant named Chakravrathy, was later cancelled.

He continued to work in the technical crews of Telugu films, most notably as the line producer in Sukumar’s Arya 2 (2009), Walt Disney Pictures’ Anaganaga O Dheerudu (2011), and Oosaravelli (2011), and honed his filmmaking skills. Ramachandra was slated to make his debut as a co-producer on Sukumarudu (2013), however he later dropped out. He later founded Bad Monkey Productions to make the unreleased Telugu and Tamil comedy flicks Antha Scene Ledu and Nondi Kuthirai (2014), starring Navdeep and Shashank.

Ramachandra initially worked with YNOT Studios with the Telugu release of Kadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi, also known as Love Failure. His role as an executive producer on the picture paved the ground for him to join YNOT Studios’ other projects. Ramachandra became the company’s chief executive officer after serving as the executive producer of Guru (2017) and Vikram Vedha (2017), and in the late 2010s, he co-produced films such as Tamizh Padam 2 (2018) and Game Over (2019) alongside the studio’s founder S. Sashikanth.

Ramachandra oversaw the company’s relationship with Reliance Entertainment to co-produce several of their projects, as well as the launch of their subsidiaries: its distribution arm, YNOT X, and the music label YNOT Music, as it approached its tenth anniversary. In the early 2020s, the studio alternated between making high-budget productions with major performers and technical personnel and small-budget content-driven films with relative rookies. Aelay (2021), Madonne Ashwin’s Mandela (2021), Nishanth Kalidindi’s Kadaseela Biriyani (2021), and Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan’s Thalaikoothal (2023) were among the smaller ventures with “off-beat” scripts.

In 2021, Ramachandra established Night Shift Studios, a film production firm dedicated solely to the horror-thriller genre. The studio announced the start of principal photography for their first feature film, Bramayugam, directed by Rahul Sadasivan and starring Mammootty, Arjun Ashokan, and Sidharth Bharathan. The film is set to be released in five Indian languages simultaneously in early 2024.