After Sanju, Ram Gopal Varma announces an honest Sanjay Dutt biopic

Director Ram Gopal Varma is making a rival Sanjay Dutt biopic to be tentatively titled Sanju: The Real Story. RGV’s decision comes after he watched Rajkumar Hirani’s biopic on the actor and felt that the film whitewashed certain aspects of his life.

Varma confirmed the news to Mumbai Mirror and said, “Yes, I am making the film.” He refused to divulge further details about the film, including who he was going to be cast as Sanjay Dutt. In Sanju, the title role was played by Ranbir Kapoor.

RGV’s film will reportedly focus on Dutt’s several brushes with the law, most prominently the terrorism charges levelled against him in relation to the 1993 Mumbai blasts. According to a source, “That Dutt was doing drugs, was traumatised by his mother’s battle with cancer (she died just three days before the release of his first film Rocky), had multiple flings, many of them one-night stands, is all well documented.” The new film will address some of the unanswered questions, like how Dutt came to be in possession of an AK-56 assault rifle in the first place.

Dutt has long maintained that he acquired the gun after his family was threatened by the underworld. In 2007, the actor was cleared of terrorism charges but was sentenced to six years in jail for illegal possession of a firearm. “Ramu has been meeting Sanjay’s associates and cops involved with the investigation as part of his research,” the source said.

RGV and Dutt have worked together on two occasions - exactly as many films as Dutt and Hirani had done together. In 1997 Dutt starred in Daud and in 2012, the cop-thriller Department.

Sanju, meanwhile, has earned more than Rs 500 crore worldwide and is the sixth highest-grossing Indian film of all time.

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