B. Gopal

B. Gopal was born at M. Nidamanuru village near Tangutur, Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh to B. Venkateswarulu and Mahalakshmi. He has two siblings, one brother Subba Rao and sister Suseela. He did his schooling in Karumanchi. Later he attended C.S.R.Sarma college in Ongole. After finishing his education, With his father permission he chose to pursue his career in movies.[1]

He started his career working as an assistant director under P.C. Reddy. After working in two movies with P.C. Reddy, he got an opportunity to work as an assistant director in the film Adavi Ramudu under K. Raghavendra Rao.[2] He considers K. Raghavendra Rao as his Mentor and Guru in Telugu cinema industry. He worked under him for almost 12 years and for movies like Adavi Ramudu, Devatha, Justice Chowdary, Agni Parvatam etc. In 1982, while he was working as an associate director for the movie Devatha under K. Raghavendra Rao, he was spotted by the producer of the movie Dr. Daggubati Ramanaidu. Impressed by B. Gopal, Ramanaidu offered him the chance to direct a movie under his banner. This led to B. Gopal's debut movie as director Prathidvani with Sharada, Arjun and Rajani. The movie was released in 1986.

He went on to direct many commercially successful movies like Bobbili Raja, Lorry Driver, Assembly Rowdy, Rowdy Inspector, Samarasimha Reddy, Narasimha Naidu, Indra etc. His association with Paruchuri Brothers is well known in Telugu cinema industry and they worked together on many successful movies. He is also famously known to collaborate with Nandamuri Balakrishna to do movies. He was the only director to have three Industry Hits, those being Samarasimha Reddy, Narasimha Naidu and Indra until 2017,then with the release of Baahubali 2 S.S.Rajamouli became 2nd director to have 3 industry hits, those being Magadheera, Baahubali: The Beginning, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion. Gopal's career hit a rough patch when his subsequent ventures like Palnati Brahmanayudu with Balakrishna and Narasimhudu with Jr. NTR becoming disasters in box office. After a gap of four years, he directed Maska with Ram Pothineni which was released in 2009. The movie was commercially declared a hit.[3] In 2011, it was announced that he would again collaborate with Balakrishna in a project called Hara Hara Mahadeva but the project got stalled after the launch.[4]

• Filmfare Award for Best Director – Telugu – Samarasimha Reddy (1999).
• Nandi Award for Best First Film of a Director - Prathidvani (1986).

• B. Gopal at IMDb