Sardar Sarvai Papanna – The Rebel King of Deccan

Sardar Sarvai Papanna – The Rebel King of Deccan is a Telugu-language historical animated feature, about 145 minutes (the CBFC runtime is 145 minutes 54 seconds), written, directed and produced by Venkatesh Goud Lingampalli under his VG Movie Makers banner. It opened in theatres across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on 21 August 2026, and its trailer, teaser and promo songs are on the makers' YouTube channel.

Lingampalli told Namasthe Telangana the film was made on a fully AI basis as an animated movie, taking care that the story's emotion was not lost. Wikipedia says visual development, background design, character styling and battle environments came from AI-assisted animation pipelines and CGI, supervised by Suresh Malla and Saganix Studio with Luminoid Studio, and lists a budget of INR 3.6 crore. Industry Hit's report of the pre-release event names Suresh Malla as Lead AI Visual Director, Mirzapuri Simon for cinematography and visual direction, and P. Srinivas for VFX. No page read names the AI model or tools used. Music is by Raj Kiran and Raghu Charukeshi with lyrics by Lingampalli, and editing by Chiranjeevi Karrolla, Praveen Ragi and Satish Peteti.

A pre-release event in Hyderabad was reported on 18 August 2026. RK Films (Dr. Prathani Ramakrishna Goud) is named as releasing it in both Telugu states, and Deepak Nyathi oversaw production. Lingampalli said the release date coincides with Papanna's 376th birth anniversary, that he put "tremendous effort, time and money" into it within limited resources, and that he expects a cinematic experience similar to Baahubali. Speakers included a former MP, who noted that the Telangana government is installing a Papanna statue on Tank Bund, and a former Legislative Council chairman who urged people to watch it in theatres. On YouTube, the main upload had about 84,000 views, the teaser about 577,000 and a clip about 334,000, all read on 10 October 2026.

Namasthe Telangana praised it as a tribute to regional history and its blend of folklore and modern animation, and V6 Velugu commended its use of new visual technology to portray Telangana's history. News18 Telugu and Times Now stressed its use of generative AI, and Times Now speculated that shooting the story on real locations and sets would have taken years and hundreds of crores. Wikipedia reports positive word of mouth after release. Wikipedia describes it as an early feature-length Indian production made with AI-assisted animation and generative computer graphics. No box office figures or awards were found.