'Sanjay Dutt’s Munna Bhai MBBS opened to empty Halls, Raju Hirani refused to take money,' reveals Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi & Gracy Singh starrer Munna Bhai MBBS, which marked the directorial debut of Rajkumar Hirani, is considered one of the finest films in the history of Indian cinema.

While the film emerged as a commercial success, it opened to empty theatres during its release at the box office.

“Munna Bhai MBBS opened to empty theatres. Raju (Rajkumar Hirani) 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,” said Vidhu Vinod Chopra while talking to Bollywood Hungama.

In of the earlier conversations, he revealed how the distributors in Tamil Nadu had backed out of their agreement after watching the film. “After watching the film, Mohammed Bhai (distributor) told us he can’t take the film as no one will understand the story. The decision was made to return his money and this was just three days before the release.” The producer added, “I called a friend of mine, Shyam Shroff, who was a distributor and got one show added in Satyam, a big theatre in Tamil Nadu. He gave me one single show, 11:45 am show for Munna Bhai. You know how much money I made from Tamil Nadu? Rs 1.67 crore,” said VVC.