Trailer
Plot summary
An eccentric lyricist arrives with a manuscript that likens actor Sanjay Dutt to Mahatma Gandhi, and Sanjay has him thrown out. The Supreme Court has just upheld his conviction under the Arms Act over the 1993 Bombay bombings, with a five-year sentence ahead, and his wife Manyata wants his side of the story told. She persuades Winnie Diaz, a biographer based in London, to write it; a builder named Zubin Mistry warns Winnie away, but Sanjay's candor wins her over, and he begins at the start. In the early 1980s his father, Sunil Dutt, watches over every step of his debut film, Rocky, while Zubin, a drug peddler nicknamed God, introduces him to drugs.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sanju (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra disliked the music and visuals for two finished songs in Sanju, so instead of re-shooting those scenes the makers hired A. R. Rahman as a guest composer to write new songs for the same scenes, including "Ruby Ruby".
- Producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra was reluctant to make Sanju with Ranbir Kapoor as Sanjay Dutt, believing Ranveer Singh had the flamboyance, emotional depth and ability to change himself for the part; after shooting began, Chopra said he had to eat his words.
- Aamir Khan was approached to play Sanjay Dutt's father, Sunil Dutt, in Sanju but turned it down because he was already playing a father in Dangal (2016); Khan said he would rather have played Dutt's role himself.
- After activist Prithvi Mhaske wrote to India's Central Board of Film Certification that a toilet-leak scene made jails look bad, the board cleared Sanju but required a scene of an overflowing toilet in Dutt's jail cell to be removed, along with some dialogue.
- Prosthetic artist Dr Suresh Murkey used prosthetics to make Ranbir Kapoor's face and age resemble Sanjay Dutt's, with Kapoor sitting for six hours of hair and make-up and repeated failed tests along the way.
- Before making Sanju, director Rajkumar Hirani told Sanjay Dutt that if Dutt asked to change any lines or scenes, he would not make the film at all; Dutt agreed and let Hirani make it his way.
- Manisha Koirala, who plays Sanjay Dutt's mother Nargis in Sanju, said reliving being a cancer patient for the role was traumatic because she is an ovarian cancer survivor, and that the part took a lot of inner strength.
- Sanju's makers built a replica of the childhood home Sanjay Dutt shared with his parents; it took 25 days to complete so the film could show Dutt's life from childhood to the present.
