Filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani’s Dunki, starring Shah Rukh Khan, was released in 2023 amid massive anticipation but fell short of expectations at the box office. Three years later, Hirani has reflected on why the film failed to strike a chord with the core cinema-going audience, and opened up about whether the response left him disappointed.
Rajkumar Hirani on Dunki
The filmmaker spoke about Dunki and the performance of the film when he appeared in a video on Sanjay Arora’s YouTube channel.
Looking back at the performance of Dunki, Rajkumar said, “Every film will touch different people differently. When you make 3 Idiots, it is about the education system, which touched every household, so it will reach every household. So, when I am making a film like Dunki, it is restricted to the people who are into illegal immigration. I get messages from Canada, America, from people who have actually done it and whose life has been affected. People who are living there are saying, ‘We are living here, but we are suffering,’ and they are like, ‘Why did we leave our country, we should have stayed there.’ So of course that section of people is limited.”
The filmmaker acknowledged the gap between the film’s subject and the core cinema-going audience, mentioning, “Our cinema audiences are middle-class audiences who can easily get visas, but there is also a population whose visa can never get approved. We can travel when we get a US visa, but what about those people who don’t have money, no bank balance? They have no chance of getting a visa, meaning they are condemned to stay where they are born, with no chance to travel. I think some people here could not relate to that.”
Despite the mixed reception, the director maintained there was no disappointment in his own assessment of the film. He mentioned that that it is not that nobody “related with the film, I am still very proud of the film. But if you don’t relate to certain things, they impact you less. Every filmmaker’s life has that graph, some films affect a larger audience, some affect fewer”.
About Dunki
Dunki revolves around four friends in a small town in Punjab and their quest to migrate to London. When they fail to do so by clearing the visa qualification exam owing to economic and language constraints, they attempt the same via the infamous illegal route, informally known as the Donkey route.
Dunki has been co-written by Abhijat Joshi, Rajkumar Hirani, and Kanika Dhillon. Apart from Shah Rukh, the film also stars Taapsee Pannu, Vicky Kaushal, Boman Irani, Vikram Kochhar and Anil Grover.
Dunki was co-produced by Shah Rukh and wife Gauri Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, Rajkumar Hirani Films, and Jio Studios. The film was released on December 21, 2023, in theatres to mixed reviews from audiences and critics. As per Sacnilk.com, the film minted ₹49.7 crore within two days of its release. Dunki hit the theatres a day before Prabhas-starrer Salaar.