After Sanju, Rajkumar Hirani flooded with biopic applications from Salman, Shiney

By Niroj Dash

After watching Sanju and obsessively following all the box-office records that the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer is breaking (including Race 3’sBO collection), Salman Khan’s Tubelight chamkoed. He called Rajkumar Hirani to set up a meeting and discuss the possibility of another biopic.

Our sources inform us that on the day of their meeting, Hirani came prepared with the tentative film title Sallu. He also had a rough plot outline in mind: Blame the media for painting Salman as a hit-and-run expert and a blackbuck killer. The truth is Sallu was just Being Human and Hirani planned to show us this with a scene where Salman feeds the blackbuck Tiger biscuits. Naturally, the film would end with an item song titled, “Bhai bola, ab bas ho gaya.”

But Hirani was in for a rude shock when Bhai laughed off his suggestions and told the filmmaker that he wanted him to make a biopic not on him, but his brother Arbaaz. Unlike Salman, Arbaaz isn’t a victim of his circumstances – he’s a victim of his own lack of talent. Naturally, Salman felt that only Hirani could do “full justice” to the complex life of Arbaaz Khan. Bhai insisted that the film should be called Hello Brother and when Hirani pointed out that there was already a film by that name, he shot back with, “If there can be two Dons and Agneepaths, why can’t there be two Hello Brothers?”

Fearing that Salman would give him the Vivek Oberoi treatment, the director kept mum. He knew from Sanju that “Bad choices make good stories.” So why couldn’t bad careers make good stories?

Like Sanju, the Arbaaz Khan biopic too needed some tearjerkers. But with no guns or jail stints involved, Hirani would have to depend on the downs and downs in Arbaaz Khan’s life to get the script going: Arbaaz losing film roles to wax statues. Arbaaz losing IPL bets. Arbaaz losing the honour of being the favourite Khan son and worst Khan driver. No biographer agrees to write his biography… the possibilities were endless.

“Who needs courts when we have Rajkumar Hirani to prove to the world that we are not guilty,”

Of course, it needed some chocolate sauce, but if Sanjay Dutt can be made to look innocent, Arbaaz can definitely be portrayed as interesting. Thankfully for Hirani, Salman sounded quite impressed but had one request: He wanted to play Arbaaz Khan in the biopic. Overjoyed as he was, Hirani sought some time to finalise the cast. Because even for Salman, it wouldn’t be easy playing Arbaaz. To go from being an actor with five expressions to one with half an expression is quite a task.

Since then, Hirani’s phone has been ringing off the hook. Sources say that Shiney Ahuja and Fardeen Khan have been trying to reach him. “Who needs courts when we have Rajkumar Hirani to prove to the world that we are not guilty,” one of the two former stars have been known to ask.

As we speak, plans are being made. With Shiney, Hirani might show that he never employed a maid and did all the ghar ka kaam himself. With Fardeen, he’d show that he had a sweet tooth and what he snorted was sugar. It is also believed that Hirani’s 4-am-ATM-friend Vidhu Vinod Chopra has requested that his next candidate be Jaggu Dada.

Tempted as Hirani might be with all the applications, his mind seems to be made up. Salman was right, Arbaaz’s plight was indeed the worst. All that is left is to convince Salman to consider a new title: Arbi, One Man, Many Flops.

This article was originally published on Arré.