How Much Did Dhurandhar Movies Cost?

Despite improvisations, the final film remains about 95 to 96 percent faithful to Aditya Dhar's original script.

IMAGE: Ranveer Singh as Hamza Ali Mazari in Dhurandhar.

Key Points

Both Dhurandhar movies were made at a combined cost of Rs 255 crore (Rs 2.55 billion).
Dhurandhar was originally planned as one movie.
Several short scenes evolved into lengthy highlight sequences, significantly increasing the film's overall duration during shooting.

IMAGE: Sanjay Dutt as SP Chaudhary Aslam in Dhurandhar.

Director Aditya Dhar spent Rs 11 lakh to Rs 12 lakh (Rs 1.1 million to Rs 1.2 million) lesser per day on the Dhurandhar movies than what he spent on his earlier film, Uri: The Surgical Strike.

So how much did the Ranveer Singh-starrer finally cost?

Aditya reveals the figure is about Rs 255 crore (Rs 2.55 billion).

Why Dhurandhar was split into two

IMAGE: Arjun Rampal as Major Iqbal in Dhurandhar.

Originally, Dhurandhar was meant to be one film.

But an eight-hour film seemed out of the question. Hence, two parts.

The length increased as the film was being shot because Aditya realised that the small montages were turning into big scenes. And those big scenes were turning out to be highlights.

Aditya tells Subhash K Jha, "A scene that was meant to be for, say 10 seconds, actually required two minutes."

For example, the scene in which Major Iqbal, played by Arjun Rampal, is introduced. He says, 'I want to buy guns.' It was supposed to be a two-and-a-half minute scene but eventually, became about nine minutes long.

'I'm very thorough with my script and research'

IMAGE: Sara Arjun as Yalina Jamali.

While Aditya had a water-tight script, the dialogues were enhanced on the sets.

A lot of the banter in the film is actually what Aditya Dhar thought on the set on the day of the shooting. But the end product is almost 95 to 96 percent close to the original script.

"I'm very thorough with my script and research," says Aditya.

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff