Badlapur has turned out to be quite the success at the box office. It will be Varun Dhawan‘s fourth straight film to enter the 50 crore club (after Student of the Year, Main Tera Hero, Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhaniya). It has also emerged as the second highest grosser of 2015 so far after Baby.
While for director Sriram Raghavan this is a reason to rejoice since the film is now set to be his highest grosser ever (surpassing Agent Vinod), for producers Dinesh Vijan and Sunil Lulla too, Badlapur has been profitable keeping in mind that it’s an adult movie. And one man who continues to gather accolades for his brilliant performance is none other than Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
However, not many are aware that when the cast of the film was being put together, there was a time when director Sriram Raghavan was seriously contemplating a role reversal of sorts between Varun Dhawan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
Our source elaborates:
Yes, Varun was tipped to play Liak and Nawaz was being considered for Raghu. This came up during one of those creative brainstorming sessions, since the film anyway features a very thin line between good v/s evil. And since the climax questions if this line gets blurred with the passage of time, this (role reversal of the two actors) was one consideration that wasn’t ignored.
With Badlapur not following a conventional hero-villain angle and both Varun as well as Nawazuddin getting author backed parts to play with exciting scenes to boast of, the field seemed to be wide open for the two actors to make their choice. But eventually, the makers went ahead as originally planned with Varun impressing as Raghu and Nawaz immortalizing Liak.
Varun added:
That’s right, and I am glad to have played Raghu. As an unpredictable and emotional character that has something simmering in his mind all the time, Raghu was complex enough for me to enact.
With audience giving both the actors a big thumbs up, guess it all turned out to be a win-win situation for one and all.