This film was rejected by Shah Rukh, Aishwarya Rai, opened to empty theatres; later became silver jubilee hit, earned…

Many Bollywood films fail to get distributors or open to empty theatres despite having the presence of stars in them. However, some of them later become a hit. One such film, which was rejected by a distributor, superstars, later became a hit. 

The film we are talking about was made by a debutant director and starred several stars. Even though it opened to empty theatres, the film later became a commercial success at the box office. It is none other than Munna Bhai MBBS. 

Munna Bhai MBBS is a satirical comedy-drama film written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani in his directorial debut and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra under the banner Vinod Chopra Films. It features Sunil Dutt in his final film role as the father to his real-life son, Sanjay Dutt, who stars as the titular character. Gracy Singh, Jimmy Sheirgill, Arshad Warsi, Rohini Hattangadi, and Boman Irani also appear in the film.

While Sanjay Dutt played the lead role of Murli Prasad Sharma aka Munna Bhai and won applause for his performance, he was not the first choice for the film. Yes, before him, the role was offered to Shah Rukh Khan, who turned down the offer due to scheduling issues. Even for Gracy Singh's role, Aishwarya Rai was the first choice, but she reportedly rejected it because of Sanjay Dutt's turbulent personal phase. 

Not only this, Vidhu Vinod Chopra also revealed in a recent movie that the film opened to empty theatres and told Bollywood Hungama, "Munna Bhai MBBS opened to empty theatres. Raju was very upset thinking I lost a lot of money. At that time, I told Raju, here is a little money about Rs 11,000. He said, ‘I will take nothing.’ I was like ‘This is for the next film, make one more. It's a great film.’ At that time, we had about Rs 4 crore. I was like make another film. I didn’t care if Munna Bhai worked or not. Although the film started to pick up pace after Monday, the seats were empty during the weekends. I didn’t really wait for the film to become a success for me to make another film." 

However, despite all of this, the film emerged to be a commercial success. At the box office, it achieved a silver jubilee status (25-week run). In its 26th week of release, the film could still be found playing on 300 screens throughout India. Made in just Rs 10 crore, the film earned Rs 56 crore worldwide. Not only this, the film made debutant director Rajkumar Hirani a star, who later gave several hits and blockbusters.

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