Siddharth Anand reveals why Hrithik Roshan wasn’t in Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan: ‘There was a thought back then…’

The raging success of Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan was a strong boost of confidence for Bollywood’s flagging spirits. With its success, the vision for the future of the YRF spy universe became clearer. While one can expect more Pathaan-Tiger crossovers, there’s much expectation that they will cross paths with Hrithik Roshan’s Kabir from War, which released in 2019. Recently in an interview, Pathaan director Siddharth Anand addressed the spy universe and what can be expected.

Speaking to Pinkvilla he said, “I don’t think this was in the back of anyone’s mind when the 2 Tiger films were made or when War was made. It is after the success of War that we thought of a universe. With the story of Pathaan, we thought this could spin into one as we already have 3 spies with scope for many more.” He explained that it was Aditya Chopra who suggested that a universe could be possible. “We could have got Hrithik or any other actor on board too, but to have Salman Khan and Shah Rukh in a film doing action has not happened before. I think the last when they were doing action together was in 1996 with Karan Arjun. Fortunately, Adi had the IP of Tiger to do this crossover and the result is fantastic,”  he said. Salman Khan had a cameo in Pathaan, where he rescues SRK’s titular character, and they fight together.

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Siddharth added that a crossover between Kabir and Pathaan has been discussed. “Obviously, there was a thought back then, but since we just started amalgamating this universe, it’s too early to bring everyone together. There should be a little thirst of getting this combination, but of course, this crossover will happen,” he shared.

Pathaan is an espionage thriller, which also featured Deepika Padukone and John Abraham. The film released on January 25 and has already crossed Rs 63o crore globally, and has broken several records in India itself, as it currently stands at around Rs 348 crore.