I Thought I Knew Sanjay Dutt: Raju Hirani on His Dutt Biopic

On Sanjay Dutt’s birthday, here’s all about the biopic Rajkumar Hirani is planning on the controversial actor

Rajkumar Hirani has given Sanjay Dutt his career’s best films – Munnabhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munnabhai and they share a great bond. So one would safely assume Raju Hirani knows Sanjay better than others.

However, the director confesses,

I thought I knew him. But when he started to tell his story, I figured I didn’t know even 1 per cent about his life. There was so much he never told me.
– Rajkumar Hirani, Filmmaker

The director reminisces meeting Sanjay Dutt when he was out on parole and his wife Manyata was hospitalised. “He asked me to come home the next day so I went. Sanju opened up. I had done three films with Sanju by then (including shooting for PK). I thought I knew him. There was so much he never told me. Then I met him again the next day. I felt there was a story there. So Abhijat and I met him for 25 days in a row. We would go at 5pm and come back at 3am. We listened to his whole story. It was such an unbelievable story that I felt I should tell this story.”

The filmmaker who is planning a biopic on the actor insists, “(We want to make this biopic) not because we want to show Sanju in great light but because a man’s life story could be like that. Look at the stories of his drug case, underworld, court case, his relationship with his father, his father’s death, his growing up days in the hostel, his relationships, his marriages. There is so much drama in his life. I haven’t heard a story like this in my lifetime.”

We have collected the material; we will research further and have started writing. We can’t say everything in 3 hours but we are trying.
– Rajkumar Hirani, Filmmaker

Ask him whether Sanjay Dutt is okay about this biopic and Raju says, “He is the one who told us the story. Otherwise, why will he tell us the story? He wants the film to be made.” But maintains that he won’t dramatise the film, “We want to say it as is. It’s a biopic.”

Raju was also going to make Munnabhai Chale America which didn’t work out. He and his co writer Abhijat, he reveals are “now writing another Munnabhai story which will star Sanjay Dutt once he is back. But that will take some time since there’s his biopic before that.”

On whether he will continue to be associated with the Munnabhai franchise Raju Hirani says, “I had committed to one more instalment of Munnabhai so I will do that and then let people take over the Munnabhai series. How much can you think about the same character. One film takes 2-3 years to write. After two films, I realized I had started talking like Munna, my language had become like his, I would feel Munna lives in the neighbourhood and I would keep seeing Dhobi ghat. So you have to do different films as well. You need to seek challenges and joy from elsewhere.”