Rockline Venkatesh

1987–2010

Venkatesh began his career in films as a stuntman and playing supporting roles in 1987. In 1992, he produced his first television series, Ashawadigalu.^[2] He started his production venture in 1996 with co-production of Ayudha. He has made films with original stories and also remakes from other languages. He has made films with top super stars of Kannada film industry like Vishnuvardhan, Ambareesh, Ravichandran, Shivaraj Kumar, Upendra, Sudeep, Puneeth Rajkumar, Darshan, Vijay and others and also made a few small budget films. He has used top film directors like Ravichandran, S.V.Rajendra Singh Babu, D.Rajendra Babu, S. Narayan, KV Raju, Om Prakash Rao, MS Rajashekhar, Sadhu Kokila, Dayal Padmanabhan, Meher Ramesh and others. In 2009, When IDBI started financing Kannada films, Rockline Venkatesh one of the initial producers to welcome the bank to Industry.^[3] Rockline Productions has now become a brand name in the Kannada film industry which has produced several blockbusters like Preethse, Preethsodh Thappa, Yaare Neenu Cheluve, Ajay, Mourya, Diggajaru, and Dakota Express.^[4][5][6]

2010 – present

In 2010, The ongoing buzz was created when it was said superstar Upendra is directing a movie after 10 years, Rockline Venkatesh produced the movie and its said that they spend lakhs of money on photoshoot itself.^[7][8] Later it was mentioned that Rohit Shetty from Hindi film industry would direct the Hindi version of the film.^[9] Recently Venkatesh has been seen working with superstars from various industries, he made his debut as a Telugu film producer with 2014's Power, starring Ravi Teja, Lingaa starring Rajnikanth which released in various languages and in 2015 he associated with Bollywood's superstar Salman Khan for the film Bajrangi Bhaijaan which emerged as a commercial success grossing over ₹6.25 billion worldwide and in the process and became the third highest grossing Indian film^[10] after PK and Baahubali.

On New Year's Eve 2015, Killing Veerappan by Ram Gopal Varma was released. Rockline Venkatesh has keyed well in the prominent role as a police officer (where he has performed police roles in movies such as Agni IPS and Police Story) who becomes one of the victim to the killings of Veerappan.

In mid 2016 Rockline Venkatesh acquired the remake rights of Marathi blockbuster Sairat for four southern languages. Sairat, the critically acclaimed love story is the first Marathi film to gross over ₹100 crore (US$15 million) worldwide.^[11] Rinku Rajguru, heroine of the Marathi film Sairat will make Sandalwood debut with the Kannada version directed by S. Narayan.^[12]

In January 2017, Rockline Venkatesh's first Malayalam film was announced. The film, starring Mohanlal and Manju Warrier, was directed by B. Unnikrishnan while Tamil actor Vishal has been cast as the main villain.^[13][14]

As producer

As actor