When Shah Rukh Khan and Rohit Shetty were dubbed as the ‘worst combination’: ‘SRK aur Rohit ka toh jamega hi nahi’

After a two-year gap, director Rohit Shetty has returned with a feature film, Singham Again, hoping to recover from the setback of his last directorial Cirkus (2022), which bombed at the box office. The fifth instalment in his Cop Universe, Singham Again boasts a stellar ensemble cast, including Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Deepika Padukone, Tiger Shroff, Arjun Kapoor and Jackie Shroff. Known for his masala action comedies, Rohit has also collaborated with Bollywood’s Baadshah Shah Rukh Khan on two films: Chennai Express (2013) and Dilwale (2015), with both turning out to be massive hits. Notably, Chennai Express held the record as Shah Rukh’s highest-grossing film for a decade before he broke it with director Siddharth Anand’s Pathaan (2023), which grossed a staggering Rs 1,055 crore worldwide.

Interestingly, many were sceptical about the SRK-Rohit pairing when Chennai Express was first announced. Some even ‘predicted’ that the two wouldn’t gel well with each other. “There was so much speculation when Shah Rukh and I came together. When Chennai Express was about to start, they said, ‘Shah Rukh aur Rohit ka toh jamega hi nahi (they won’t get along!). It is the worst combination’, ‘Shah Rukh goes overboard when he does comedy, how will Rohit handle him?’ and ‘Arre, Rohit’s making a love story… what kind of a love story will he make?’ They reacted based on what they thought the film would be. The reality is that only I know what I am making,” he told Rediff during a chat in 2013, prior to the release of the duo’s first collaboration.

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Also starring Deepika Padukone, Nikitin Dheer, Sathyaraj and Kamini Kaushal in key roles, Chennai Express was produced jointly by Shah Rukh Khan and his wife Gauri Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment and UTV Motion Pictures. The film’s song “Lungi Dance – The ‘Thalaivar(r)’ Tribute,” composed and sung by rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh as a nod to “Superstar” Rajinikanth, became a major trendsetter, amassing over 423 million views on YouTube.

Prior to Singham Again, Rohit Shetty created and directed the action thriller series Indian Police Force for streaming giant Amazon Prime Video. Featuring Sidharth Malhotra, Shilpa Shetty and Vivek Oberoi, this show was also set in the Cop Universe. Singham (2011), Singham Returns (2014), Simmba (2018) and Sooryavanshi (2021) are the other four films in the franchise. In her review of Singham Again, SCREEN’s Shubhra Gupta wrote, “It’s all so same-old in Ajay Devgn-Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again that even the new locations don’t help. Neither does all the blatant-referencing-and-copy-pasting of Ramayan.”