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I wanted Ranveer Singh to play Sanjay Dutt, says Sanju producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra

I wanted Ranveer Singh to play Sanjay Dutt, says Sanju producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Chopra said he "wasn’t happy at all" when he found out that Ranbir Kapoor was cast as Dutt
21 Jun, 2018

After watching the Sanju trailer countless times, it's hard for us to imagine anyone other than Ranbir Kapoor playing Bollywood's favourite bad boy.

However, it seems like the flick's producer, Vidhu Vinod Chopra wasn't on board initially with Kapoor being cast as Sanjay Dutt for the latter's biopic.

He shared: “When he [Rajkumar Hirani, director] told me about Ranbir, I wasn’t happy at all. I thought someone else, like Ranveer Singh, could play this role much better. I thought Ranveer had the flamboyance, the emotional depth as well as the ability to change himself completely to play Sanjay Dutt. But Raju was adamant that Ranbir would be perfect. And when we started shooting and Ranbir became Sanjay Dutt, I had to kind of eat my words."

In fact, the whole idea of making a movie on Dutt's life was bizarre to Chopra!

"I was like, ‘What’s there in Sanjay Dutt’s life that merits being made into a film?! It’s better you make a film on my life, how I left Kashmir as a young boy and struggled when I came to Bombay. I thought Raju and Abhijat (Joshi, Sanju’s co-writer) had lost their minds!,” he shared while laughing.

“When he (Hirani) sat me down and started narrating all that had happened in Sanju’s life, I was stunned! At first, I thought it was hogwash, that Sanju was somehow not telling Raju the truth but when we started researching all that he’s said — from the 308 girlfriends he had to how he begged on the streets of US for the money to buy a bus ticket — we realised that everything he had told us was true!”

The film is slated to hit the screens on June 29, 2018. The film also stars Dia Mirza, Sonam Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Paresh Rawal, Manisha Koirala, Boman Irani among others; Tabu will be making a cameo appearance in the movie.