Dharma Productions and Leo Media Collective have attached an unnamed A-list actor to their Rameshwar Nath Kao film, six years after the project was first floated.
Six years after it was first floated, Karan Johar's Rameshwar Nath Kao film finally has a piece of casting news, sort of. Variety reported on Sunday that Dharma Productions has an A-list actor attached to lead the untitled espionage feature, though nobody's saying who yet.
The project, a co-production with Leo Media Collective, was announced back in early 2020 and then went quiet the way a lot of ambitious biopics do. It's back now, timed deliberately. The makers picked September 21 to make the announcement because it marks 58 years since the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, was set up in 1968. The film itself is aiming for an August 11, 2028 release, which lines up with R&AW's 60th anniversary and the Independence Day weekend.
That's a lot of dates to hit, and Dharma's giving itself room. Production is slated to begin by mid-2026, per Variety, which leaves roughly two years to shoot, post and market a period spy drama spanning 1955 to 1971. No director has been named. No title either. Casting beyond the mystery lead is unconfirmed.
What is confirmed is the source material. The film draws on Nitin Gokhale's book "Gentleman Spymaster," and the story tracks the years leading up to R&AW's formation through to its first operational test, the 1971 war with Pakistan. Kao founded the agency and remains, by most accounts within Indian intelligence circles, the figure successive chiefs point to as the template for how the outfit was supposed to run.
Johar, in a statement, called it a project the studio wants to treat as "a gripping story based on true facts" and framed it as a tribute timed to the agency's milestone year. Leo Media Collective said it has spent two years on research and dramatisation.
The pairing isn't new. Dharma and Leo Media Collective already worked together on "Bad Newz" in 2024 and "Kesari: Chapter 2" this year, so this is a third round for the two outfits. It also slots into a run Dharma's been on for a while now, doing real-events cinema like "Kesari," "Raazi" and "Shershaah" instead of the rom-coms the studio built its name on.
Whether the lead actor's identity leaks before an official reveal is the obvious next question. Spy films in this space have a habit of casting big and announcing loud, so the silence here is a little unusual. For now, Dharma's given fans a date and a book to go read while they wait to find out who's playing India's first spymaster.
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