General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Gangstars

GangStars (Telugu: ముఠానక్షత్రాలు) is an Indian Telugu-language crime comedy web series that premiered on Amazon Prime Video in 2018 as the platform's first Telugu original series. Its twelve episodes follow a gangster who, after a cancer diagnosis, launders his black money by producing a film, drawing him into the lives of four people working in the Telugu film industry.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Platform and first	Amazon Prime Video's first Telugu original (Prime Exclusive) series¹
Format	12 episodes; runtime about 21 minutes per episode; age rating UA13+³
Release	Season 1 in 2018; Rotten Tomatoes lists May 31, 2018, while launch coverage reports availability starting June 1²^•¹
Key creatives	Created and written by B.V. Nandini Reddy; directed by Ajay Bhuyan; dialogue by Lakshmi Bhupala⁴
Production	Silly Monks Entertainment and Early Monsoon Tales, the web division of Vyjayanthi Movies⁵
Languages	Telugu original, with Tamil and Hindi versions available¹
Audience rating	IMDb 6.5/10³

Spoilers

Premise

The series centers on Kumar Das, known as KD, a notorious gangster played by Jagapathi Babu. When a doctor tells him he has stomach cancer and may die soon, KD decides what to do with the black money he has accumulated, which he wants to secure for his wife and child. Rather than real estate or politics, he chooses to launder the money by becoming a movie producer.⁶

This decision entangles KD with four principal characters: Ajay (Sidhu Jonnalagadda), a struggling filmmaker; Keerthi (Apoorva Arora), the niece of a star's manager; and the A-list stars Vishwa (Navdeep) and Aishwarya (Shweta Basu Prasad), who break up during a shoot and refuse to work together. KD threatens Ajay and Keerthi to make the film, and the story follows whether they complete it and whether KD learns the truth about his medical condition.⁷^•³ The promotional material described the show as a fast-paced thriller with overtones of comedy, revolving around two movie stars, two ex-lovers, and a ruthless gangster whose lives are interconnected by one incident.⁸^•⁹

Cast and crew

The ensemble brings together established Telugu cinema names: Jagapathi Babu, Navdeep, Shweta Basu Prasad, Sidhu Jonnalagadda, Apoorva Arora, Posani Krishna Murali, Rahul Ramakrishna, and Sivaji, among others.⁷^•¹ For Jagapathi Babu, it was his first web-series role.¹⁰

Creative team. The series was conceived and written by B.V. Nandini Reddy, the director of the Telugu hit Ala Modalaindi (2011), with dialogue by Lakshmi Bhupala and direction by Ajay Bhuyan, whose earlier films include Phir Se and Dhada.⁶^•⁴ It was produced by Silly Monks Entertainment and Early Monsoon Tales, the web division of Vyjayanthi Movies, the banner behind the Savitri biopic Mahanati; Swapna Dutt of Early Monsoon Tales and Sanjay Reddy of Silly Monks served as the named producers.⁵^•¹¹

Release and reception

Amazon Prime Video launched the series in Hyderabad at the end of May 2018 and made it available in Telugu, Tamil, and Hindi exclusively on the platform from June 1.¹ Rotten Tomatoes lists the release date as May 31, 2018.²

Critical response. Reviews were mixed. The News Minute found the series partly entertaining, writing that it offers genuine laugh-out-loud moments as long as it does not take itself too seriously, but that once it tries to tell a story it goes haywire.⁷ Scroll.in judged that the premise, an unholy alliance between the underworld and the film industry, initially sounds promising but delivered plenty of awkward moments and only a few laughs, while crediting the makers with candid touches about star tantrums, arbitrary script changes, and film journalism.⁶ Firstpost called the maiden Telugu web series a wasted opportunity.⁵ India Today compared its blend of drama, romance, and humor to Hollywood's Get Shorty, though without its clever plotting.¹² On IMDb the series holds a 6.5/10 rating.³

Significance for Telugu streaming

As the first regional-language Telugu series announced on Amazon Prime Video, GangStars was covered in the Telugu press as a marker of the growing market for digital content in the language. Nandini Reddy, who scripted the series, described it as a great opportunity to put Telugu content on an international platform.¹³ The series remains available to stream on Amazon Prime Video in India.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Indian and South Asian web series

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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