Karan Johar's Dharma Productions has set an August 11, 2028 release for its long-delayed film on R&AW founder RN Kao, timed to the agency's 60th anniversary and based on Gentleman Spymaster.
The release date for the production was officially confirmed by Karan Johar. The movie produced jointly by Dharma Productions and Leo Media Collective about Rameshwar Nath Kao, the founder of the Research and Analysis Wing of India, will be released on August 11, 2028. The date of the release was set for September 21 in order to celebrate the 58th anniversary of the founding of R&AW. It will also celebrate the 60th anniversary of the agency in 2028. Shooting of the film is scheduled to begin in mid-2026. As for the title, the director and other members of the cast, it remains unknown at this time.
Born in Benares in 1918, Kao joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1940 before moving into intelligence work, where he was responsible for security arrangements involving Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. During the 1950s, he undertook several sensitive assignments abroad, including work to help establish an intelligence organisation in Ghana. Following the 1962 war with China, which exposed significant gaps in India's intelligence capabilities, Kao was appointed to head the Aviation Research Centre.
When the government established a separate external intelligence agency in 1968, he became its founding chief. Kao led R&AW for nine years, a period that included the agency's most consequential operation: supporting the Mukti Bahini during the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. He later returned to government service under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, contributed to the establishment of the National Security Guard, and retired from public life in 1989. He died in 2002.
The screenplay is based on journalist Nitin Gokhale's book Gentleman Spymaster and is expected to cover the period from 1955 to 1971, tracing the events leading to the formation of R&AW and its first major operation. Johar described the project as the product of two years of research by Leo Media Collective, and characterised it as a fact-based account intended to honour the agency's milestone year.
The film continues Dharma Productions' record of dramatising real historical events and figures, following titles such as Raazi, Shershaah and the Kesari franchise, and represents the studio's third collaboration with Leo Media Collective after Bad Newz and Kesari: Chapter 2. A separate television series on Kao's life, announced by director Hansal Mehta in 2022, has seen no reported progress since.
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