‘Munna Bhai MBBS made me rich because nobody bought that film’: Vidhu Vinod Chopra recalls South distributor rejecting film with ‘Bambaiya’ language

“I had a distributor in South of India, who had brought Munna Bhai for Rs 11 lakh. Those days, they used to take delivery. So he came to take delivery four days before the film’s release. When he saw the film, he said, ‘Sir, this film won’t work even for a day. Nobody outside of Mumbai would get the language of Munna Bhai,” added Chopra.

Munna Bhai MBBS revolved around a Mumbai-based gangster’s (Sanjay Dutt) resolve to become a doctor. In the film, the titular character and his henchmen, including right-hand man Circuit (Arshad Warsi), spoke in Bambaiya, a street language of Mumbai.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra recalled offering to return the advance of Rs 5 lakh that the South distributor had already paid him, even though he insisted not to in exchange of keeping it as a security for Chopra’s next film.

“The bottom line is I had no distributor for South India. I had friends — Shyam Shroff and Bala Shroff — who had a company. There was a cinema there, and I got just one morning show at 11 am in Chennai. I sold my print there for Rs 5 lakh. My final business from that one centre was in Rs 1 crore plus,” revealed Chopra.

“Nobody went to see the film the first day or the second day. But when you do good work, (it’ll pay). Which is where I’m anti-marketing. Not anti-marketing, but I don’t really care about marketing because people will discover. Even 12th Fail started with Rs 10-30 lakh. It ran for seven months in cinemas in today’s time! Two months after it released, it was already on an OTT platform like Hotstar, yet people went into cinemas,” said the filmmaker.

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His latest directorial 12th Fail (2023) revolved around Vikrant Massey’s character, a UPSC aspirant from Chambal, Bihar. The film, backed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s production house VVC Films, earned Rs 56.38 crore at the domestic box office. Jaskunwar Kohli’s Zero Se Restart, based on the making of 12th Fail, released in cinemas last year, and is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.