Not Manoj Bajpayee, Chiranjeevi was the original choice for The Family Man, reveals Raj Nidimoru

3 min readHyderabadJun 15, 2026 05:41 PM IST

Filmmaker Raj Nidimoru, revealed that Chiranjeevi was the original choice for the series, The Family Man

Before Manoj Bajpayee became Srikant Tiwari, before The Family Man became one of the most watched Indian streaming series of the decade, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK had written the story with an entirely different actor in mind: Megastar Chiranjeevi.

Raj Nidimoru, in a conversation with Idle Brain Jeevi, revealed that the Telugu megastar was their first choice for the project, which was originally conceived as a feature film. “Chiranjeevi was our first choice for The Family Man,” Nidimoru said. “We initially wrote the story with him in mind and planned to make it a feature film. However, due to various reasons, the project later evolved into a web series.”

The revelation reframes one of Indian streaming’s most celebrated success stories. The Family Man, created, written, and directed by Raj and DK, launched on Amazon Prime Video on September 20, 2019, and has since run for three seasons, starring Manoj Bajpayee as Srikant Tiwari, a middle-class Mumbai man who secretly works as a government intelligence officer for TASC, the Threat Analysis and Surveillance Cell. The show brought back Priyamani, Sharib Hashmi, Ashlesha Thakur, and Vedant Sinha across seasons, with Samantha Ruth Prabhu joining in Season 2 and Jaideep Ahlawat and Nimrat Kaur coming on board as newcomers in Season 3.

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Season 3, which released in 2025, became Prime Video’s most-watched series of 2025 in its launch week, trending in the top 5 across more than 35 countries.

Had the original plan held, the story of a conflicted intelligence officer balancing duty and family would have been a Telugu feature film with one of the biggest stars in Indian cinema in the lead role. Chiranjeevi, whose career spans over four decades and who is widely regarded as one of the defining figures of Telugu cinema, would have brought an entirely different register to the character that Bajpayee eventually made iconic.

The shift from feature film to web series also reflects a broader transformation in Indian entertainment during that period. When Raj and DK first conceived the project, streaming platforms had not yet reshaped how Indian audiences consumed content. By the time The Family Man launched in 2019, Amazon Prime Video had come to India, and the series format allowed the story far more room to breathe than a two-hour film would have permitted.

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On where the series is headed, Nidimoru has been candid about the ambition behind the Season 3 cliffhanger. “We have a bigger plan in mind and this was like a pause at the midpoint,” he said. Writing for Season 4 is already underway, with the creators hinting at a shorter turnaround this time. “Will Season 4 come sooner than later then? Looks like we will have to,”

What The Family Man might have looked like with Chiranjeevi in the lead role remains one of Indian cinema’s more intriguing what-ifs.