Reports: Gautam Gambhir openly criticizes MS Dhoni's biopic
The biopic on MS Dhoni, India’s limited-overs cricket captain, has already garnered several headlines before its slated date of release. In another recent development, and a shocking one at that, Dhoni’s one-time teammate and India opening batsman, Gautam Gambhir, has gone on record saying that biopics should not be made on cricketers, and rather, they should be made on several other Indian nationals who have contributed much more to the country.
As per media reports, Gambhir snubbed the idea of making biopics on cricketers, saying, “Not at all, I don’t believe in biopics on cricketers. I think those people, who have contributed more to the country than the cricketers, deserve a biopic.”
“There are lots of people in the country who have done so many noble deeds for the nation. Therefore biopics should be made on their lives.”
This has created a fresh air of controversy around the much-hyped film which aims to present the real-life story of arguably India’s greatest ever limited-overs captain. Earlier, there were reports about crucial incidents from Dhoni’s off-field life being revealed in the movie and also the fact that the director of the movie, Neeraj Pandey, was not a fan of the cricketer.
When the trailer of MS Dhoni: The Untold Story was released for the first time, some cricketers were shown to have been disliked by the India captain and it was also shown that the cricketer, played on-screen by popular Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput, had deemed them unfit to be a part of the team. Speculations went around thereafter, wherein it was assumed that those players were former India cricketers Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman.
However, the director, Pandey, had snubbed aside those allegations and had urged the fans to wait until September 30 – when the movie gets released – to find it out for themselves.
Nevertheless, both the real-life Dhoni as well as the reel-life Dhoni have left no stones unturned in terms of promoting the movie as its release date approaches. Recently, in another snippet on YouTube, the two of them were seen having a friendly banter, wherein Dhoni asks Rajput questions about his life and the actor answers them with the minimum of fuss.
Hence, the aura has been built, the fans have been hooked, be it by the best practices adopted by the filmmakers or by the controversies that have surrounded it, and once the movie releases, it is expected to drag the cricket crazy public of the country towards the theatres in large numbers.