Koratala Siva beats Rajkumar Hirani, Sanjay Leela Bhansali in Forbes India's 2018 celebs list

Tollywood director Koratala Siva has emerged as the highest earning director to be featured in 2018's Forbes India Celebrity 100 list and he has surpassed Rajkumar Hirani and Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

Forbes has announced the list of top 100 celebrities from India sports, films, television, music and literature. Seven directors from Indian cinema have made it to the 2018's Forbes India Celebrity 100 list. Telugu filmmaker Koratala Siva has emerged as the top Indian director, beating biggies from the Hindi film industry.

Koratala Siva started his career as a scriptwriter with the movie Girl Friend in 2002. After writing scripts for six Telugu films, he made his debut as an independent director with Mirchi, which was a big hit at the box office. Then there was no looking back for this ace filmmaker, who went on to churn out series of hits.

So far Koratala Siva has directed four-hit Telugu films like Mirchi, Srimanthudu, Janatha Garage and Bharat Ane Nenu. He has gone to set a new benchmark for himself with his 2018 release Bharat Ane Nenu crossing Rs 200 crore gross mark at the worldwide box office. Now, he is gearing up to direct megastar Chiranjeevi in his upcoming film.

On the other hand, Rajkumar Hirani and Sanjay Leela Bhansali have landed in the 47th rank in 2018's Forbes India Celebrity 100 list with their earnings of Rs 18.33 crore in this year. Rajkumar's Sanju and Sanjay's Padmaavat have raked up Rs 586.85 crore gross and Rs 585.87 crore gross at the worldwide box office in this year.

Remo D'Souza, Rohit Shetty, Hari and R Balki are other film directors, who have made it to 2018's Forbes India Celebrity 100 list. However, some big names like Shankar of 2.0 fame, AR Murugadoss of Sarkar fame and Aanand L Rai of Zero fame are missing in this list, which has surprised many people across the country.