3 min readHyderabadJun 10, 2026 08:21 AM IST
In the mid-2000s, Nandamuri Balakrishna was fighting a battle that had nothing to do with his characters on screen. The son of Telugu cinema’s most revered icon, N. T. Rama Rao, he had spent decades building a loyal fanbase on the strength of his films. But somewhere between 2005 and 2009, that momentum collapsed entirely, and the industry started to question whether his time as a bankable solo lead had passed. It was at this time that Simha arrived in 2010.
Films like Vijayendra Varma, Veerabhadra, Allari Pidugu, Okka Magaadu, Maharathi, Pandurangadu, and Mitrudu flopped one after another, but the actor did not stop trying.
Simha is a 2010 Telugu-language action drama directed by Boyapati Srinu and produced by Paruchuri Kireeti under the United Movies banner. The film cast Balakrishna in a dual role, as a university lecturer in Hyderabad named Srimannarayana, and as his father Simha in the flashback portions. The story follows Srimannarayana, who does not tolerate injustice anywhere and eventually uncovers his family’s past, heading to Bobbili to complete his father’s unfinished mission.
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The combination of Boyapati, a director known for crowd-pleasing action, and Balakrishna, who had built his career on raw, larger-than-life screen presence, turned out to be exactly what was needed. Boyapati understood instinctively what Balakrishna’s audience wanted: a hero who walks into a room and owns it, dialogues that land like punches, and emotion that does not ask permission. The dual role structure gave the film both mass spectacle in the present and genuine dramatic weight in the flashback, so audiences got the action they came for and stayed for the story. That balance is harder to get right than it looks, and Simha got it right.
Released in 2010, the film was a blockbuster, ending Nandamuri Balakrishna’s long streak of failures and grossing over Rs 60 crore at the box office with a distributor’s share of Rs 36 crore. It ranked as the second-highest-grossing Telugu film of 2010 by distributor’s share, behind Maryada Ramanna, which earned Rs 40 crore.
The film created a sensation by running in record numbers of theatres for 50 days and completing a 100-day run successfully. Balakrishna won the Nandi Award for Best Actor for Simha in 2010. It was his second Nandi Award, the first having come for Narasimha Naidu in 2001.
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What Simha also did was establish a working relationship that would define the next phase of his career. The Boyapati Srinu-Nandamuri Balakrishna combination returned with Legend in 2014, which ran for months in theatres and is widely regarded as a mass entertainer of that era. Then came Akhanda in 2021, which grossed over Rs 125 crore worldwide and became Balakrishna’s highest-grossing film at the time.
But it started with Simha. With Simha in 2010, Balakrishna reinvented himself for for a new generation of audiences. It was the kind of film that did more than perform well at the box office. It reminded a large, devoted audience that their favourite star still had something to give, and sent a messsage to the industry that writing him off had been premature.
Nandamuri Balakrishna revived his career with Simha.