V. Vijayendra Prasad

Koduri Viswa Vijayendra Prasad was born on 27 May 1942 in a Telugu family, in Kovvur near Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh. He studied at Sir C. R. Reddy College in Eluru.^[4]

Prasad's family had lands in Kovvur which were lost when the railway lines went through most of them.^[14] Then, Prasad moved to Karnataka from Kovvur in 1968. He, along with his elder brother K. V. Sivashankar, bought seven acres of paddy fields in Hirekotikal village of Manvi Taluk in Raichur district. Their family moved back to Kovvur in 1977.^[15] He also ventured into various businesses which ended up as losses.^[4]

His brother Siva Shakthi Datta's passion for films made Vijayendra Prasad and his family to shift to Madras. Datta assisted a couple of directors for some time and started a film titled Pillanagrovi which was stopped midway due to financial reasons. As his brother was already in the film industry, Prasad started assisting his brother.^[4]

Prasad got introduced to K. Raghavendra Rao through Samatha Arts' Mukherjee who was a friend of his. Raghavendra Rao started giving he and Datta small assignments. They got their first break with Janaki Ramudu (1988) which became successful at the box office.^[4][16]

Next, he wrote the film Bangaru Kutumbam (1994) which won the Nandi Award for Best Film.^[17] His next film was Bobbili Simham (1994) which was commercially successful and earned Prasad recognition as a screenwriter.^[4] He later provided the story for Samarasimha Reddy (1999) which became one of the biggest hits of the time in Telugu cinema.^[18]

Prasad married Raja Nandini.^[19][20] They have two children—a daughter who now lives in Australia and a son S. S. Rajamouli, a filmmaker.^[19] Prasad is uncle to music composers M. M. Keeravani, M. M. Srilekha, and Kalyani Malik.

Prasad dropped 'K' from his name, K. V. Vijayendra Prasad as he felt it was an indicator of his caste.^[21][19] He cited Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana as a source of his inspiration.^[22] He cites 1957 Telugu film Mayabazar, as his all-time favourite film.^[23] He also cited the screenwriting duo Salim–Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) as a major inspiration on his work, especially their screenplay for Sholay (1975), among other films.^[24] On 6 July 2022, Indian government nominated Prasad to the Rajya Sabha.^[13]