With just 9 days left for Sanju‘s release, the excitement for the movie is at an all-time high. The entire cast and crew of the film is busy with promotions and seem just as eager for the movie’s release as we are. Having watched the trailer, we can’t think of anyone else that could’ve stepped into Sanjay Dutt‘s shoe like Ranbir Kapoor has. But the producer of the film thought otherwise, at least initially.
In an interview with Telegraph, Vidhu Vinod Chopra revealed that he was taken aback and thought Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi had lost their minds when they came to him with Sanjay Dutt‘s life story.
But when he 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!
He also opened up about how he could not imagine Ranbir playing Sanjay.
It was Raju’s idea to cast Ranbir. When he 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.
He added that he had to eat his own words when he saw Ranbir’s transformation into 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. I think I can best sum this up by saying that Ranbir has become Sanjay Dutt both in swagger and soul.
Woah! This is a real shocker! But we’re glad Raju Hirani stood his ground.