Babita Phogat would have become well-known thanks to Nitesh Tiwari’s 2016 wrestling drama Dangal, which starred Aamir Khan. However, the film didn’t fare well financially for her family. The wrestler-turned-politician revealed in a recent interview how much the Phogat family was paid by the film’s producers for the rights to make a film on them.
When questioned about the amount of money the Phogat family received from Dangal’s producers, she replied that it was less than 1% of the movie’s overall box office receipts. For those who don’t know, Dangal brought in about ₹2,000 crore at the box office worldwide. She said that it was half of 10% of that, or about ₹1 crore, when the anchor questioned whether the Phogat family had gotten ₹20 crore from the producers. This agreement was reached with director Nitesh Tiwari’s crew during the screenplay phase, long before Aamir Khan joined the project as a producer.
“My father (Mahavir Singh Phogat) had said only one thing – ‘We want people’s respect and love. Leave everything else’,” Babita said. She added that she became a household name thanks to the people, and not so much the movie itself. She also recalled when Aamir came on board, his team suggested changing the characters’ names too, but Mahavir didn’t relent. Babita also revealed that after Dangal became a huge commercial success, her father proposed to Aamir’s team that they open a wrestling academy in Haryana. “Of course, we were in talks with his team regarding the opening of an academy. They said neither yes nor no,” Babita said, adding that the academy never materialised eventually.
Dangal, co-produced by Aamir Khan Productions and Siddharth Roy Kapur’s UTV Motion Pictures, featured Aamir as Mahavir Singh Phogat, Sanya Malhotra and Suhani Bhatnagar as Babita Phogat, and Fatima Sana Shaikh and Zaira Wasim as Geeta Phogat. Sakshi Tanwar portrayed the mother of the Phogat sisters. It is considered the greatest worldwide success of Hindi film to date.
