Dhurandhar producer reveals why Ranveer Singh-starrer wasn’t ‘easy film to greenlight’; says Dhurandhar 2 will be even bigger hit | Bollywood News
4 min readKochiFeb 9, 2026 04:07 PM IST
After dominating the Indian box office in 2025 with Dhurandhar, director Aditya Dhar, actor Ranveer Singh, and the movie’s team are gearing up to extend their success streak into 2026, as the sequel to the spy actioner is set to hit screens on March 19. Mounted on a reported budget of Rs 280 crore, Dhurandhar ended up collecting Rs 1,304.5 crore worldwide, according to industry tracker Sacnilk, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing Indian film of all time. Hence, expectations are sky-high that the second instalment in the duology will fare even better.
Producer likens Dhurandhar’s success to that of Sholay
Expressing full confidence that Dhurandhar 2 will emerge as a far bigger success than its predecessor, Jyoti Deshpande, who co-produced the movie under the banner of Jio Studios, opined that the 2025 spy actioner may be the only movie whose success can be likened to that of Ramesh Sippy’s all-time classic Sholay (1975). “This is not just a maker’s success; it is as much the audience’s success. It has been decades since we saw a film that has taken up the imagination of the movie-going public. They have made it a success by watching the film multiple times and talking about it. After Sholay, I can’t think of a film that has been as successful. It is something that we can’t script. It’s something marketing money can’t buy, something that money can’t achieve,” she told Fortune India.
She continued, “We know what’s in part two; we have the conviction. We have shot both films together. Had the first part not fired, the second one would have sat in our cupboard. However, we were sure the first part would fire, so we put that energy out. We are so happy the audience took a shine to it. We believe Dhurandhar 2 will be bigger than the first part.” Jyoti further claimed that Dhurandhar’s Hindi version alone earned three times as much from the southern states as other successful Hindi movies had done thus far.
Nonetheless, she admitted that Dhurandhar was a risky film to greenlight. “It was not an easy film to greenlight because it defied all the norms. When you greenlight a film, you think about the genre, the actor, and the commerciality of it. It is true that stories rarely fail; the budgets fail. So, how do you shoot one large film or two films that are going to cost a lot of money, that are adult (A-certified), have a lot of gore, and are almost fully shot in Pakistan with almost 100 per cent Muslim characters? It doesn’t tick any box. So, how do you back such a film? I found it clutter-breaking; I found it more moving rather than in-your-face patriotic films.”
Watch Dhurandhar 2 teaser here:
Responding to criticisms against the movie’s political undertones, which many found problematic, Jyoti, who serves as the president of Jio Studios, told Forbes in a recent interview, “I do not believe at all that this film was propaganda or it had some agenda to deliver. It definitely was not against any religion. That was not the intention of the film or the intent. It cannot even be interpreted like that. If we are rooting for our country, there’s nothing wrong with it. We’re not rooting for our country at the cost of any religion or anything. We’re saying terrorism is bad. Terrorism is bad in any religion.”
Starring Ranveer Singh, Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, R Madhavan, Arjun Rampal, and Sara Arjun in the lead roles, the second instalment in the duology, titled Dhurandhar: The Revenge, will also be released in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam, alongside the Hindi original. It will clash with Geetu Mohandas’ Yash-starrer Toxic at the box office.
