Krishnadev Yagnik

Chhello Divas premiered on 20 November 2015 with eight friends in their final year of college and a cast almost nobody in Gujarat could name yet: Malhar Thakar, Yash Soni, Mitra Gadhavi, Aarjav Trivedi, Rahul Raval, Janki Bodiwala, Kinjal Rajpriya and Netri Trivedi. Yagnik wrote it and directed it under Belvedere Films, the production house he co-founded. Half of that cast list is now the front row of Gujarati cinema.

The tell came the next year. Anand Pandit and Rashmi Sharma bought the Hindi remake rights and Yagnik himself directed Days of Tafree, released 23 September 2016. Most regional directors wait years to be invited into Hindi cinema. He got there inside twelve months, and he got there carrying his own script.

The credits database that covers Gujarati films from 2012 onwards lists him as the most frequently credited writer in the language. Chhello Divas, Karsandas Pay and Use, Shu Thayu?, Vandha Villas, Raado, Naadi Dosh, Vash, Danny Jigar and Vash Level 2. Nine titles, eight of which he also directed.

Vandha Villas in 2018 is the one that gives the game away. He wrote it and co-produced it, and Chinmay Parmar directed it. The same year he wrote and directed Shu Thayu?, a remake of the 2012 Tamil film Naduvula Konjam Pakkatha Kaanom, which went on to a reported Rs 21 crore and sits seventh on the list of highest grossing Gujarati films of all time. He was working both sides of the same year and both sides landed.

For eight years the register was comedy and romance, films built for a college audience and a family row. Then on 17 February 2023 he released Vash, a supernatural horror film about a pilot's daughter enslaved by a stranger through black magic, ending in a scene where a father deafens his own child with a pair of scissors to cut the villain's voice off from her.

At the 71st National Film Awards it won Best Feature Film in Gujarati and took Janki Bodiwala the award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, ten years after he had cast her as a college student in his first film. A sequel, Vash Level 2, opened on 27 August 2025 with a Hindi dubbed version alongside it and reported Rs 16 crore, which puts a second Yagnik title in the all time Gujarati top ten.

Vash was remade in Hindi as Shaitaan, directed by Vikas Bahl with Ajay Devgn, R. Madhavan and Jyothika, released on 8 March 2024. Janki Bodiwala played the daughter again. It reported Rs 211.06 crore worldwide on an estimated budget of Rs 60 to 65 crore and finished as the fifth highest grossing Hindi film of that year.

Set that against the ceiling of his own industry. The biggest Gujarati film ever made, Laalo in 2025, reports Rs 120 crore. Yagnik's script, in another language with another cast and another director, reported nearly twice that. Gujarat's most valuable export in this decade was not a star or a studio. It was one horror screenplay.

His banner is Big Box Series, which produced Vash Level 2 and carries his own website. In June 2026 Panorama Studios and Big Box Series announced Goldhana, with Janki Bodiwala and Yash Soni again, directed by Chinmay Parmar and produced by Kumar Mangat Pathak, Abhishek Pathak, Murlidhar Chattwani and Yagnik. He posted the wrap on 23 July 2026.

So the arc closes where it started. The director he handed Vandha Villas to in 2018 is directing his production in 2026, and the actors he cast as teenagers in 2015 are the leads he now finances. He did not build a filmography. He built a supply chain, and he sits at the writing end of it.