Ranveer Singh chose backend deal over big fee for Dhurandhar, says producer

Actor Ranveer Singh took a smaller upfront fee for Dhurandhar and later earned more through a backend profit-sharing deal, producer Jyoti Deshpande has said. In a recent interview, Deshpande said Singh and director Aditya Dhar both came on board with lower fixed fees and chose to share in the film's profits. She said the arrangement helped distribute "both the risk and the reward" among the main creative partners. Deshpande also said Dhurandhar was not planned as a franchise at the start. It was written, budgeted, and mounted as one film, but later expanded into two parts and ended up costing almost twice as much as originally planned. Speaking to ET Digital, Deshpande said, "In Dhurandhar, Ranveer came with a smaller fixed fee and a backend deal, and therefore benefited from that arrangement. The same was true for Aditya, who also came in with a smaller fixed fee and a backend." She said Dhar too made "a significant upside" along with the makers. Deshpande added, "In the end, all of us went laughing to the bank." How one film became two According to Deshpande, Dhurandhar was written as one story. It was envisioned as one film and budgeted as one film. She said the team reconsidered that plan after the first shooting schedule. "The footage that came out of that first schedule was beautiful. The pace of the storytelling made us feel the story had the legs to become a two-part film," she said. Deshpande added that the move was uncertain at the beginning and that the team had to commit capital before it became, in her words, a "slam dunk". Why the script appealed to her Deshpande said the script first drew her in because it was "fully set in Pakistan" and dealt with the idea of the deep state, which she said had existed in reality for years. She said the challenge was to explain the concept to mainstream viewers while breaking "every conventional norm of storytelling". She also said, "The chapterised format excited me," adding that audiences used to OTT viewing respond to immersive storytelling. She said the makers felt the film could become a long-running franchise if it worked, and cited Bond and Mission: Impossible as examples. She said the emotional core finally made her back the project. "Although it may look like a gangster film on the surface, I found it deeply moving and deeply patriotic. That gave me the purpose to make this film," she said. Dhurandhar follows Indian undercover operative Jaskirat Singh Rangi, also known as Hamza Ali Mazari, as he moves through criminal ecosystems while infiltrating Pakistan's criminal and terror networks. The cast also includes R Madhavan, Akshaye Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, Gaurav Gera, Rakesh Bedi, Sara Arjun, Danish Pandor, Udaybir Sandhu, Bimal Oberoi, Saumya Tandon and Manav Gohil. The first film, released on December 5 last year, collected more than Rs 1,350 crore worldwide. Dhurandhar: The Revenge, released on March 19, added another Rs 1,800 crore globally and took the combined total past Rs 3,100 crore. After its theatrical run, Dhurandhar: The Revenge is scheduled to release in its Raw and Undekha version on JioHotstar in India on June 4, while the first film's Raw and Undekha version is already streaming on Netflix and JioHotstar.