Bollywood superstar Salman Khan’s action film Sikandar was released in theatres in March this year. The film saw an underwhelming response at the box office, despite its grand scale and expectations. The film’s
director AR Murugadoss has now opened up about his experience of working with Salman. In an interview with Valaipechu Voice, the filmmaker discussed the challenges he encountered while collaborating with the superstar.
AR Murugadoss On Collaborating With Salman Khan
AR Murugadoss said that working with Salman was not easy. Revealing that the Bollywood superstar would show up on set at 8 PM, he said that they would have to shoot eve day scenes in the night. He explained, “It’s not easy to shoot with a star. Even day scenes, we have to shoot at night because he turns up on set only by 8 PM. We are used to shooting right from early mornings, but that’s not how things work there.”
The director also remembered how this impacted other actors on set: “If there were four kids in a scene, we would have to shoot with them at 2 AM, even if it’s the shot of them returning from school! They would become tired by that time and usually dozed off.”
AR Murugadoss Blames Himself For Sikandar Failure
Meanwhile, AR Murugadoss has openly taken responsibility for the film’s underperformance, admitting that he failed to execute the story the way he had envisioned. “The base story was very emotional,” Murugadoss explained. “It’s about a king who doesn’t truly understand his wife. Many of us are like that — whether it’s with our mother, wife, or friends, we don’t value relationships until they’re gone. In the film, after the king loses his wife, her organs are donated to three people. He then seeks them out to fulfil what he couldn’t do for her. In the process, he befriends an entire village. The story had heart, but I couldn’t execute it well.”
AR Murugadoss returned to Bollywood with Sikandar after nine years. His previous Hindi film, Akira, a remake of the 2011 Tamil film Mouna Guru, featured Sonakshi Sinha, Anurag Kashyap, and Konkona Sen Sharma in lead roles but failed at the box office, earning only Rs 43.90 crore against a budget of Rs 30 crore.
About Sikandar
Salman Khan plays Sanjay “Sikandar” Rajkot, a man driven by personal tragedy to protect three individuals whose lives were altered by his late wife’s act—a gesture that puts him against a vengeful politician. Besides Salman, the film stars Rashmika Mandanna, Kajal Aggarwal, Sathyaraj, Sharman Joshi, and Prateik Babbar. It received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics and flopped at the box office, earning only Rs 184.6 crore worldwide on a reported budget of Rs 200 crore.
Salman Khan’s Upcoming Film
Salman’s next project is Apoorva Lakhia’s Battle Of Galwan. The eagerly awaited war film is based on the 2020 Galwan Valley conflict between India and China.
