Sandeep Reddy Vanga reveals why he made Ranbir Kapoor, Bobby Deol's characters deaf and mute in Animal: 'I didn't want...'

The 2023 crime drama Animal featured Ranbir Kapoor as the protagonist and Bobby Deol as the antagonist. Ranbir Kapoor's character of Ranvijay Singh Balbir loses his hearing ability in the violence-filled interval and Bobby Deol's Abrar Haque becomes mute from trauma after witnessing his grandfather's suicide. Ranvijay and Abrar are also cousins.

In an interview with the film critic and trade expert Komal Nahta on his YouTube channel Game Changers, when the director Sandeep Reddy Vanga was asked why he made the main villain of the film a mute person with no dialogues, he replied, "We have seen a lot of films where the hero and villain pick up the phone and abuse each other, or there is some sort of dialoguebaazi throughout the film. So, I thought what if the villain is mute and I know that the hero has become deaf, so I thought a deaf and a mute person fighting in the climax is an exciting idea."

Even after Animal was criticised for glorifying toxic masculinity and misogny, and for its excessive violence, the film went on to become a blockbuster. The Sandeep Reddy Vanga directorial earned Rs 553 crore net in India and grossed Rs 915 crore worldwide. It became the fifth ighest-grossing Bollywood film worldwide after Dangal, Jawan, Pathaan, and Bajrangi Bhaijaan.

Apart from Ranbir and Bobby, Animal also starred Anil Kapoor, Rashmika Mandanna, Triptii Dimri, Shakti Kapoor, Prem Chopra, and Saurabh Sachdeva among others. The film will be a followed by a sequel titled Animal Park, as revealed in the post-credits scene. Ranbir Kapoor has confirmed that the franchise will be a trilogy with the third film's tentative title to be Animal Kingdom.