Aditya Dhar’s film Dhurandhar, starring Ranveer Singh, Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, R Madhavan, Sanjay Dutt and others, is making huge waves at the box office. The film, which released in theatres on December 5, has collected an impressive Rs 239.25 crore in India within the first 8 days, and is showing no signs of slowing down. The film is being especially praised for the interesting casting choice and the actors’ brilliant performances. Casting director Mukesh Chhabra has now revealed that he and director Aditya Dhar took nearly a year and a half to finalise the casting.
Mukesh Chhabra Opens Up About Dhurandhar Casting
In an interview with PTI, Mukesh Chhabra said that his aim with this film was to surprise people, and to make casting look more
interesting and fresh. “People were expecting twists in this film, and therefore, I wanted to twist things with the casting. Every person should feel that it is a well-thought-out thing and that we have not cast someone randomly,” he said. Mukesh Chhabra further shared that he and Aditya Dhar spent nearly 1.5 years to finalise the cast. “With each and every casting, we literally spent so much time on thinking whether Arjun, Madhavan, Sanju baba or Akshaye would be correct or not. Every day, me and Aditya would sit for two to four hours, bouncing names, fighting, discussing, ‘It (actor) might work, not work, let’s surprise people, let’s go extra, and push ourselves’. Earlier, we had some other names of (actors), we had OTT faces (actors), then we thought of making it (film) bigger,” he said.
Mukesh Chhabra On Casting For Rehman Dakait And Aalam’s Roles
While Akshaye Khanna is being praised by one and all for his brilliant performance as gangster Rehman Dakait, did you know there was a lengthy list of actors that were initially being considered for the role? Mukesh Chhabra said that they had a list of 50-60 actors from various backgrounds, including South movie actors, for the role of Rehman Dakait. However, they ultimately cast seasoned actor Akshaye Khanna for the role. Mukesh Chhabra had earlier suggested Khanna for the 2017 film ‘Mom’.
Meanwhile, the casting director also revealed that they did a lot of auditions for the role of Donga and Aalam, which eventually went to Naveen Kaushik and Gaurav Gera respectively. He also revealed that he initially thought of roping in Sunil Grover for Aalam’s role, however, he ultimately decided to cast Gaurav Gera.
