Arjun Reddy

Arjun Reddy is a 2017 Indian Telugu-language romantic drama film written and directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga in his directoral debut and produced by his brother Pranay Reddy Vanga's company Bhadrakali Pictures. It stars Vijay Deverakonda and Shalini Pandey while Rahul Ramakrishna, Jia Sharma, Sanjay Swaroop, Gopinath Bhat, Kamal Kamaraju and Kanchana appear in supporting roles. The film tells the story of Arjun Reddy Deshmukh (Deverakonda), a rich and alcoholic surgeon, who has Schizotypal Personality Disorder that causes anger management problems. Arjun is on a self-destructive path after the marriage of his girlfriend Preethi Shetty (Pandey); the film focuses on his downfall and subsequent resurgence.

Arjun Reddy was partially inspired by Sandeep Vanga's life as a physiotherapy student. He worked on the script for two years and it took four to five years for the film to materialise. Principal photography commenced on 20 June 2016 at Hyderabad and took 86 working days to complete. Other filming locations include Mangalore, Dehradun and New Delhi, filming also took place in Italy. Radhan and Harshvardhan Rameshwar composed the soundtrack and score, respectively. Raj Thota was director of photography and Shashank Mali edited the film.

Made on a budget of ₹5–5.15 crore; the film was released worldwide on 25 August 2017. It received positive reviews from critics, with its direction, writing, cinematography and the cast performances being called out for praise, but drew criticism for allegedly promoting substance abuse among young people and for its misogynistic scenes. The film was a box office success, grossing ₹51 crore globally, with a distributor share of ₹25.5 crore.

It received six nominations at the 65th Filmfare Awards South, including Best Telugu Film and Best Telugu Director for Vanga; the film's only win was Best Telugu Actor for Deverakonda. The film was remade in Hindi as Kabir Singh (2019) and twice in Tamil: as Adithya Varma (2019) and Varmaa (2020).