Maidaan headlined by Ajay Devgn and directed by Amit Ravindernath Sharma released at the cinemas on April 10, 2024. The film won critical acclaim and appreciation from the audience but failed to perform at the box office. It also received accolades for its OTT streaming on Amazon Prime.
Now, the director has talked about this aspect in an exclusive interview with the DNA. Anit said, “When the film was released, a lot of people did not watch it. But whoever watched it only praised it. They all appreciated it. I was making rounds of the theatres and I saw the reaction of the public watching it. It was amazing.” The director said that after Maidaan was released on OTT, he received many messages and emails.
According to him, many said they should have watched it in theatres but at the end of the day, he added that people can’t be forced to go to theatres. Maidaan, produced on a massive budget of Rs 235 crore, registered only an estimated Rs 68 crore as its collection.
Maidaan narrates the story of Syed Abdul Rahim, a legendary manager who served as the coach of the Indian football team for over a decade from 1950 to 1963. Priyamani, Gajraj Rao, Nitanshi Goel and others have also acted in the film.
Apart from the box-office failure despite an amazing concept, Maidaan also hit troubled waters due to the plagiarism allegations. The Mysore court had ordered to halt the release over a plagiarism claim by a scriptwriter Anil Kumar from Karnataka. The principal district and Session court in Mysore had issued an order prohibiting the release of this Ajay Devgn starrer film.
The scriptwriter Anil had alleged that the makers had plagiarised his storyline. Anil claimed that he had penned a story on the Indian football team’s expulsion from the FIFA World Cup in the year 1950 in 2010. According to him, he had also registered the same story with the Screen Writers Association in Bombay under the title Paadanduka. He had uploaded the same on his LinkedIn post.
Anil further claimed that Sukhdas Suryavanshi, Maidaan’s assistant director, had interacted with him in 2019. Both had spoken about the idea of a script written by Anil Kumar. Sukhdas had promised Anil to make him meet Amir Khan to produce a film on the same which didn’t happen.
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