Atlee and his wife Priya were at the Ambani residence for this year's Ganesh Chaturthi celebration, and the photographs from the evening have been doing the rounds online since, according to Filmibeat Tamil. It's not a one-off. The director, who started out with a handful of Tamil films, has apparently become a fixture on the Ambani family's guest list ever since he crossed over to Hindi cinema.

He was there at the Ambani wedding too, mingling with the VIPs who flew in from across the world, per the report. Filmibeat Tamil says invitations from the family now arrive for pretty much every function, and this week's Ganesh Chaturthi gathering was simply the latest.

From Chennai to Bollywood's inner circle

Atlee cut his teeth under Shankar before directing Raja Rani, a film Filmibeat Tamil describes as an unannounced take on Mouna Ragam that still turned into a hit on the strength of his writing and staging. He then had a run with Vijay on Theri, Mersal and Bigil, with only Bigil failing to click.

The real shift came with Jawan. Working with Shah Rukh Khan took him pan-India, and the film's official numbers put its lifetime collection at around Rs 1,000 crore, a figure that reportedly made him the first filmmaker to cross that mark after moving out of Tamil cinema. Word in the industry, as the report notes, is that he's also landed firmly in Shah Rukh's good books since.

That kind of number changes what people expect from your next film, and Atlee's next is enormous by any measure. He's now directing Allu Arjun in Raka, a project Sun Pictures is bankrolling with what's being described as a massive budget. Deepika Padukone is part of the cast, Saai Abhyankar is composing the music, and the film is shaping up as a science-fiction outing with VFX being handled through a tie-up with an overseas studio, per Filmibeat Tamil.

The ambition is fairly explicit. Having delivered a Rs 1,000-crore Hindi film, Atlee is said to be aiming for Raka to prove South Indian cinema can hit that number too, on its own terms. Filmibeat Tamil also notes the film was originally meant for a release this year, but has since been pushed to next year for reasons that haven't been detailed.

What's clear is that Atlee's social calendar and his box office ambitions are moving on the same track. The Ambani invites are a marker of how far his stock has risen since Jawan. Whether Raka can repeat that number, with a Telugu-Hindi crossover star in Allu Arjun and Deepika in the mix, is the bigger question hanging over 2027.