Director Ram Gopal Varma has announced plans to make a rival Sanjay Dutt biopic in response to Rajkumar Hirani’s blockbuster Sanju, starring Ranbir Kapoor.
RGV’s decision comes after he watched Sanju and felt that the film whitewashed certain aspects of the Bollywood star’s life.
Confirming the news to Mumbai Mirror Varma said, “Yes, I am making the film.”
However, he refrained from sharing further details about the film, including who he was going to cast as Dutt.
RGV’s film will reportedly focus on Dutt’s several brushes with the law, most prominently the terrorism charges levelled against him in relation to the 1993 Mumbai blasts.
According to a source, the fact “that Dutt was doing drugs, was traumatised by his mother’s battle with cancer, had multiple flings, many of them one-night stands, has all been well documented in the film,” but does not shed enough light on how, for example, Dutt came to be in possession of an AK-56 assault rifle in the first place.
Dutt has long maintained that he acquired the gun after his family was threatened by the underworld. In 2007, the actor was cleared of terrorism charges but was sentenced to six years in jail for illegal possession of a firearm.
“Ramu has been meeting Sanjay’s associates and cops involved with the investigation as part of his research,” the source added.
RGV and Dutt have previously worked together on two occasions: in 1997’s Daud and in 2012, the cop-thriller Department.
Meanwhile, Sanju has gone onto becoming a box-office success and has become the sixth highest-grossing Indian film of all time.
