Rajkumar Hirani confirms new Munna Bhai film, says it’s not Munna Bhai Chale America
Rajkumar Hirani is all set with his Sanjay Dutt biopic, Sanju, but the question he is still unfailingly asked is: when will the next Munna Bhai film happen? The two Munna Bhai films – Munna Bhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munna Bhai – still have a strong hold on people’s hearts thanks to the hope and happiness they bring along.
Talking to Outlook, filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani – who made his debut with 2003’s Munna Bhai MBBS – said we may see Sanjay Dutt again as the bhai and Arshad Warsi as his trusted sidekick. When asked if the franchise will return, the filmmaker said, “We wanted to do the third Munna Bhai film and even wrote a lot of it, but we were not able to match the script with the first two. Now, I have found something, though we still have to write it.” Hirani and his co-author Abhijat Joshi have penned all Munna Bhai films together.
Talking about the success of the two films, Hirani said, “We were all new and naive at the time. While we were filming Munna Bhai MBBS, we didn’t think we were doing some kind of mainstream cinema. I only knew that I was doing a different kind of cinema. More than its commercial success, it fetched us a lot of love and affection from people. I was happy that my family and friends saw it. That joy itself was enough. Never in my life had I thought of anything like this.”
Interestingly, even Sanjay Dutt earlier joked about it to Aamir Khan. Raju tells us, “Once, when Sanjay met Aamir, he told him, ‘Raju Munna Bhai nahin likh raha hai, meri kahaani likh raha hai. And the latter joked, ‘Tumne usko batayi kyun? Usko woh zyada interesting lagi hogi.’”