Okkadu remains a masterpiece in Mahesh Babu's career. While director Gunasekhar already had the core idea of a story set against the backdrop of the Charminar and Old City, he was struggling to shape the protagonist's primary conflict and motivation.
During the scripting phase, he happened to read a newspaper interview of badminton legend Pullela Gopichand, who had just achieved massive success by winning the All England Open Badminton Championships in 2001. In that interview, Gopichand spoke at length about the immense hardships he faced early in his career, particularly how he had to pursue his passion for sports against his father's initial wishes. This specific dynamic struck a chord with Gunasekhar. He took that real-life father-son conflict and translated it into the script, changing the sport to kabaddi.
Okkadu was originally conceived in the backdrop of the Hyderabad of 1948. In the late 1990s, around the time of Chiranjeevi's Chudalani Vundhi, Gunasekhar wrote the story of Okkadu as a love story between a Hindu male and a Muslim female in the Nizam era. The atrocities committed by the Razakar Islamist army was the villain of the story. Ramoji Rao came forward to produce it at first. However, he later backed off because he didn't want to court any controversy by producing an inter-religious love story.
