'Rang De Basanti' to 'Sam Bahadur': Films backed by Ronnie Screwvala, Bollywood's 'only billionaire'

According to the 2025 Forbes Billionaire List, Ronnie Screwvala, a Bollywood film producer and entrepreneur who founded the UTV Group,  is Bollywood's "only billionaire, with a net worth of $1.5 billion." It has been reportedly said that Ronnie's wealth surpasses that of Bollywood's three biggest superstars — Shah Rukh Khan ($770 million), Salman Khan ($390 million) and Aamir Khan ($220 million), who have a combined net worth of $1.38 billion. 

 

Having built his billion-dollar media conglomerate over the last 40 years, from Bollywood to Disney, Screwvala has had a colourful and hugely successful swathe, ever since he began in the mid-90s. He, along with his wife Zarina, has also founded, Swades Foundation, the nonprofit group, with $1.4 billion received from the 2012 sale of the UTV Group to the Walt Disney Company. 

 

Back then, in the 90s, the UTV Group gave the country its first reality show, its first talk show, its first daily soap opera, its first home shopping network and its first channel for children. His Bollywood productions by way of his company RSVP movies, beginning with Rang De Basanti in 2006, have been more than typical song-and-dance sequences. 

 

Here's a plethora of superhit films under his belt, which also happen to be some of his most notable works:

 

Rang De Basanti (2006) 

 

Directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, RDB was a critically acclaimed film that told the story of a British documentary filmmaker making a movie about Indian freedom fighters and how a group of young Indian collegians participated in the country's independence movement. 

 

Barfi! (2012) 

 

Anurag Basu's tender romantic comedy-drama film narrates the story of a deaf and mute boy (Ranbir Kapoor) who falls in love with an autistic girl (Priyanka Chopra). Told mostly without dialogue, the film has Kapoor in a Chaplin-inspired performance, exceptionally restrained and organic.

 

The Lunchbox (2013) 

 

This is a romantic drama film that explores the unlikely friendship between an accountant and a housewife through mistaken deliveries of lunch. The film is helmed by the late and legendary Irrfan Khan and actress Nimrat Kaur, both of whose on-screen characters fall to chance and serendipity that leads them, both, random middle-class individuals, to begin an epistolary correspondence full of empathy and charm.

 

Haider (2014) 

 

A Vishal Bharadwaj directorial, co-written by acclaimed Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer, Haider is a thrillingly ambitious and powerful crime drama film, adapted from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and set in Kashmir.

 

Dangal (2016) 

 

Helmed by Aamir Khan, this is a biographical sports drama film that tells the story of Mahavir Singh Phogat, an Indian wrestler who trains his daughters to become international wrestlers.

 

Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) 

 

An action drama film that is based on the true events of the 2016 Uri attack and the subsequent surgical strikes carried out by the Indian Army, this film further elevated Vicky Kaushal's career given his tremendous acting chops as evident in the film. 

 

The Sky Is Pink (2019) 

 

A biographical drama film that tells the story of Aisha Chaudhary, a young girl who suffers from a terminal illness, the film was anything but mundane. However, its running was simply too long, at two and a half quarter hours. 

 

Sam Bahadur (2023)

 

An adulatory tribute to Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, this film, led by Vicky Kaushal, was sharp and believable. Manekshaw is presented throughout the film as a hero who is noble, witty and always right.

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