The teaser for Dragon has been out for barely a day, but social media is already losing its mind over it. Dropped on May 20 to celebrate Jr NTR’s 43rd birthday, the first glimpse introduces him as a razor-sharp, lethal assassin named Luger. While fans were busy obsessing over his shockingly lean new look, director Prashanth Neel dropped a behind-the-scenes bombshell that the actor actually lost nearly 15 kilograms in a brief four-month window to pull this off.
The idea for the transformation wasn't even part of the original plan. It came up about a year and a half ago during routine pre-production look tests. While trying out different styles, Neel realized that a standard action-hero build wouldn't do justice to the character. Recalling his conversation with the star, the filmmaker said, “I told him that if you became thinner for the role of the assassin, it would help.”
Neel meant it as a gentle note, but Jr NTR took it as a personal mission. The actor completely cleared his calendar, hitting the brakes on all other projects to lock himself into a brutal fitness regimen. “He didn’t shoot for the next four months, and he lost about 15 kgs at one point of time. I asked him to stop many times in between because he started looking frail and became paler but he didn’t stop,” Prashanth shared.
Because the weight melted off so fast, people close to the actor started getting incredibly anxious. In fact, Neel joked that he quickly became the most unpopular man in the room, with everyone blaming him for pushing the superstar to the brink of exhaustion. “His wife was upset with me, his mother was upset with me, all his friends were upset with me. Everybody who knew him was upset with me. My whole team was upset with me, but I told them that was not my doing. I just told him to lose a little bit of weight, and he went berserk with it,” the director added with a laugh.
Even though the rapid change looked scary from the outside, the director emphasized that it was handled with absolute medical and professional care. The setup happened almost instantly, within 30 minutes of their initial creative chat, Jr NTR’s fitness coach was already in the room mapping out a plan, and the diet and workouts started the very next morning. The film’s shoot had to be pushed back a few months to accommodate the transformation, but Neel insisted the final footage made the delay worth every single day.
Naturally, when early photos of a leaner Jr NTR leaked online months ago, the internet immediately started wondering about weight-loss shortcuts like Ozempic. However, his personal trainer, Kumar Mannava, shut down the gossip right away. He clarified that the transformation was 100% natural, built on pure discipline, calculated nutrition, and heavy gym sessions, revealing that the actor crushed a whopping 9.5 kilos in just the first seven weeks of the grind.
With Jr NTR leading the film, the film stars Anil Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana, Rukmini Vasanth, and Biju Menon. Dragon is officially locked in for a June 2027 theatrical release.
