I wrote this as part of my Hyderabad post, but gave it its own post as it is pretty long and ruined the flow of the main Hyderabad post. Check that out for more to do in the city. That post also includes info on Hyderabad’s movie theaters and films set in Hyderabad, and I also have a separate post on Telugu cinema, relevant to the subject matter here. This is based on my one day visit to Ramoji in January 2024.
Ramoji Film City isn’t for everyone, but it was a must do for me and I had a ton of fun. I would rank it among my favorite places in Hyderabad. You might too, particularly if you are interested in Indian cinema. It’s quite far from the city (it took around an hour from Banjara Hills without any traffic) and it takes a full day. Like the original Universal Studios Hollywood, it is part theme park and part actual studio, which is certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest film studio complex (I’m not sure if the “largest” refers to the 1,666 acres or the 47 sound stages or both, but for comparison’s sake Universal Studios is around 400 acres and 35 sound stages).
The theme park part of it is a mixed bag. I love the kitschy architecture, some of the best modern architecture in India, I dare say. But the two rides are quite mediocre and rundown, basically conforming to a typical westerner’s expectations of what a theme park in India is like, but they still disappointed me. I wasn’t expecting anything top notch, but it all felt so low budget and in need of an upgrade. If you’re from a village and will never go to a better theme park, or you’re under the age of 12, then it’s probably pretty good, and I realize that’s the case for many visitors, but I suspect most of my readers aren’t in that category. I guess it’s worth experiencing that nonetheless.
However the shows are pretty good! The wild west show has better stunts than most Indian movies for some reason (also for some reason, the performers all appeared to be from Northeast India, as did many employees). They have an interactive show that demonstrates how visual and sound effects are done. These compared favorably to the similar shows at better theme parks I’ve been to. My favorite show was the circus show in the (almost entirely very lame) kid’s section of the park, the circus acts were very impressive!
The studio bus tour is the highlight of the experience though. You see a few dozen sets, mostly exteriors that get reused from film to film, including a train station, a village, a jail, and several houses of different architectural styles, including one where each side of the house is a different style. There’s the temple set, durbar set, mughal garden set, everything you’d want. I was impressed at the authenticity and detailing of the sets, and you actually get a mini-tour of India driving through here. It was cool to see the dockyard shipping crates set too, I’ve seen those in every other South Indian masala movie in either a song or fight or both and always wondered what was up with that. I still wonder, but at least I know where they’re shot. The guides on the bus will point out where they filmed some scenes from big movies, and my wife said the guide’s jokes were funny, though I didn’t understand the Hindi.
Of course, the best part is the Baahubali set! That was awesome. There are a few other specific movie sets that they kept for tourists, like Chandramukhi, that was great fun even though I found that movie difficult to sit through and wasn't really excited to see the set.
The worst part of the bus tour is when they take you to see a bunch of caged birds, which I found to be cruel and sad, especially since there were dozens of children irritating them.
Though I didn’t go inside the actual production facilities, nor am I very qualified to judge, I was impressed with the studio overall. It is much much nicer than Mumbai’s film city, which is basically a village dotted with sets and stages. Ramoji is very clean and organized. It seems fairly up to date. I saw a dedicated motion capture stage, which surprised me, but it makes sense. I get why even Hindi films come to shoot here. There are undoubtedly safety issues, there was a recent fatal stage accident at an event, but I imagine this as good as it gets in India for quite some time.
Also, surprisingly, the food was pretty decent. Nothing special, but better than I expected, solidly prepared basic Indian restaurant food. They have several restaurants, I forgot where I had lunch but they had different thali options (north/south Indian, veg/non-veg), and we also got dosas in the evening in the main courtyard area. I imagine the quality is the same at all of the restaurants.
There are a few hotels to stay at there with different price points, but a one day trip was plenty and not too rushed. I wouldn't feel any need to spend the night there.
I hadn’t heard of the founder Ramoji Rao before coming here. He also owns Eenadu, which is the largest Telugu newspaper, ETV, which is a major network of television television channels (I think just Telugu now, but they used to be in several languages before selling some channels off to Reliance), Priya Foods, which sells pickles and masalas which you’ll see in every grocery store in Hyderabad, some clothing brands, and more. Ramoji Film City also has several office buildings for these businesses, an R&D center for Priya, a film school, and a journalism school.
Ramoji himself has a mansion on the property, high up on the hill. I can’t help but wonder if this newspaper conglomerate and film studio owner is a Citizen Kane fan.
Ramoji Film City was designed by Nitish Roy who has had an impressive career as an art director/production designer, working with a number of India's top filmmakers (they include Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Govind Nihalani, Mira Nair, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Gulzar, Rajkumar Santoshi, Ramesh Sippy, and Gurvinder Chadha!). Wikipedia says he worked on Gladiator which I assumed was BS, but it’s actually true, and a lot of the set decorations were made in Hyderabad (though not at Ramoji). The story of the outsourcing is very interesting! I like the story of the art director Crispian Sallis going on a shopping spree:
“While the artists sweated it out to meet the impossible deadline, Sallis went on a crazy shopping spree in Hyderabad. “He wanted to buy saris for the sets,'' says Pillai, “to use for the tents and curtains and robes. So, we went to a sari shop and he asked the owner, how many saris in your shop?'' “About 700,'' said the shopkeeper. Crispan bought the whole shop.
Then he went and bought up four more sari shops. The shopkeepers were in shock. Finally, they concluded that this was just another mad foreigner. To the delight of Hyderabadis, the mad foreigner did not stop at saris. He bought two tonnes of dried flowers and leaves (confirming local opinion that he was loco), about a hundred charpoys and sackfuls of jute.”
Nitish Roy also designed Innovative Film City in Bengaluru and Prayag Film city in Kolkata, which I hadn’t heard of. This bio says he built “several theme parks, amusement parks including water parks and a snow dome, thematic restaurants, museums not only in India but overseas.” I can’t find a list of his works anywhere, but I found out that he did some restaurants in Kolkata, the tribal museum in Vizag, and the Snow World in Hyderabad. I will try to visit all of these. I am a Nitish Roy completist.
He also did a few “Hollywood” movies (really B movies) that shot at Ramoji, with names like Roger Corman, Boaz Davidson, and Avi Lerner among the producers. Some promo materials tout Hollywood films being shot here but calling them “Hollywood” movies is a bit of a stretch. Nightfall, Air Panic, Crocodile 2, In the Shadow of the Cobra, and Quicksand are the only titles I found, all early ‘00s non-studio straight to video movies nobody has ever heard of. I’d be curious to know more about these productions, why they happened and why there weren’t more of them. Avi and Boaz, hit me up with details! I wonder if good quality facilities at a low cost drew them out, but then they weren’t as satisfied with the result as expected, or something else? Indian bureaucracy, weather, food poisoning, etc?
A Mark Tully piece where he interviewed Ramoji (not online, included in the book The Untold Charminar) did discuss some of the difficulties of filming in India. It said that scripts needed approval from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry which had the power to remove anything objectionable, and they would have a ministry official oversee the production to make sure they followed their guidelines. It also said how visas were an issue.
Ramoji remarked on those regulatory challenges, saying as a sign off to his interview, “If I had my way I would shoot the bureaucrats one by one. Goodbye.”
Legend. RIP.
(Sounds like a good idea for a Telugu movie.)
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