According to him, “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."
"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 revealed.
“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 silver screen on June 29, 2018.