The Dhurandhar phenomenon

Why Aditya Dhar's high-octane spy thriller has become the highest-grossing Hindi film in India, with its gory realism, magnetic villains and patriotic fervour striking a national chord

ISSUE DATE: May 25, 2026

When filmmaker Aditya Dhar and his brother Lokesh of B-62 Studios walked in late in 2024 to tell Jyoti Deshpande, president, Jio Studios (Media & Content Business RIL), the story of an Indian spy embedded in the gangs of Karachi, little did they know they were about to rewrite box-office history. Aditya, after debuting with blockbuster Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), and producing three films, was itching to get into the director’s chair, and he had seen an ambitious big-budget project get stuck already. The task of narration at the pitch meeting was assigned to Ojas Gautam, brother of Aditya’s wife, actress Yami Gautam.

Deshpande recalls the day vividly. “The script was very long,” she says, in an interview after Part 1 of the film became a roaring success. It was high on action set-pieces, many of them violent, and almost all unfolding in Pakistan. The resulting A (adult) certification meant the film wouldn’t be a family outing. “All the standard, formulaic commercial filters that would apply in greenlighting a project would summarily fail,” thought Deshpande. “And it was an expensive film.” But she liked its character- rather than plot-driven format, and its take on patriotism. “It wasn’t in your face and was still more moving than most patriotic films,” she says.

And so, Dhurandhar was born. When the first schedule wrapped, the film had already exceeded its budget, but the makers saw the rough footage and knew they had a winner on their hands. Four months before its release, they took a bold decision: to split the film into two parts so that the story would not be compromised. “Aditya and I knew it would be all or nothing,” says Deshpande. “Either the second part would be toilet paper, something we wouldn’t sell to anybody and be the only ones to see, or the film would be extremely successful.”

Two years on, their gamble having paid off, Deshpande and the Dhars are having the last laugh. The Dhurandhar duology has set new benchmarks for the domestic box office, with the Hindi version collectively amassing over $187 million (Rs 1,790-plus crore), and an additional haul of $45 million from the United States (see Dhurandhar Mania below). The films’ worldwide total has surpassed $320 million (Rs 3,000 crore). Not just India, even Pakistan, the film’s narrative punching bag, couldn’t help but be curious, with reports of nearly 20 million illegal downloads of Part 1 and the film trending at #1 on Netflix for weeks.

PATRIOTISM MEETS STYLE

Part of the reason the Dhurandhar duology has been embraced with such gusto by audiences worldwide is that “all of us want victims of terror attacks to be avenged and for justice to prevail”, says Akkshay Rathie, a film exhibitor and distributor. Telling the story of an Indian spy, Hamza, played by Ranveer Singh, the duology tracks his initiation into the intelligence ecosystem and how he infiltrates the terror infrastructure in Pakistan. “Dhurandhar is every Indian’s fantasy coming true on celluloid,” adds Rathie. The film projects the rise of an assertive India, or as Hamza and Indian intelligence chief Ajay Sanyal (R. Madhavan) say, “Yeh naya Hindustan hai. Ghar mein ghusega bhi, aur maarega bhi (This is a new India, it will force its way into your house, and kill you too).”

However, according to Shailesh Kapoor, founder and CEO of Ormax Media, a firm that tracks India’s media and entertainment industries, the films’ success cannot be attributed solely to their ability to stoke nationalist sentiment. “[It’s unlike] The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story because they were backed by political and religious groups... [Dhurandhar’s popularity] is more organic than orchestrated,” he says. Unlike the overly glamourised spy universe (War, Pathaan and Tiger Zinda Hai) of Yash Raj Films, the shrewdness and sacrifice of Dhar’s R&AW operatives are expressed in more understated tones. Yes, Part 1 is an espionage thriller, but it’s also a gangster-led crime drama. It has adrenaline-pumping action and well-etched, compelling characters, like the crooked politician Jameel Jamali played with delightful precision by Rakesh Bedi. Clips from the 26/ 11 Mumbai terror attacks are seamlessly woven into the fictional narrative to bolster Hamza’s struggle. The spy himself often stays in the shadows, ceding narrative space to Pakistani gangsters.

The film’s attention to detail has also earned its fair share of fans, unusual for a Bollywood film, with the duology inspiring a unique online hashtag: #peakdetailing. Fans have taken to pinpointing how Sanyal doesn’t leave his cigarette stub in a Dubai hotel lest he leave his DNA behind, or how Jaskirat Singh Rangi (undercover as Hamza) is also the name of a character in Uri, a testament to Dhar’s deep world-building. Instagram has introduced a font inspired by the title’s typography. Other touches, like the film’s use of chapters to break down the narrative, are reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films, an aspect particularly favoured by Rai. Dhar has “incorporated global influences and indigenised them”, says Swapnil Rai, professor of Media Studies at the University of Michigan and author of Networked Bollywood.

The music, too, plays a big role in the films’ popularity. Your patriotic side, of course, roots for Hamza as he shoots down Karachi-based terrorists, but the depiction of Akshaye Khanna’s Rahman Dakait and Sanjay Dutt’s Aslam Chaudhary to the tune of reimagined classics like ‘Hawa Hawa’, ‘Monica, O My Darling’, ‘Tama Tama Loge’ and ‘Yeh Ishq Ishq’ gets you tapping your feet, too. There’s no escaping Flipperachi’s track ‘FA9LA’ on social media, now the internet’s go-to swag anthem. Composer Shashwat Sachdev’s soundtrack thrives on nostalgia-tripping. Says Rai, “It is a very creative sampling of well-known favourites, recasting them into a global, energetic, rap-driven aural experience. It works across multiple generations, with millennials and Gen Z alike enamoured of this hybrid blend.”

WORRYING PRECEDENT?

But the duology isn’t without its critics. Multiple clips of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Part 2, and Pakistani characters referring to him as a “chaiwala” who has made their lives miserable, have attracted accusations of Dhar serving a political agenda. As has the incorporation of the 2016 demonetisation exercise into the narrative. However, the films have become such a lightning rod of political sentiment that any criticism invites accusations of being anti-national. According to Shohini Ghosh, professor at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Milia Islamia, Delhi, “A large majority of audiences don’t read films ideologically but enjoy the affective experience they provide.” Rai feels that the film is “a reflection of contemporary nationalist sentiment in the country”, and says that while it’s not “the most ideologically nuanced film, [it’s] not propaganda either. It is not a mouthpiece of the state, nor does it intend to ‘educate’. The motive, rather, is to entertain.” She equates the films to Frederick Forsyth’s novels. “The narrative is so rooted in historical facts that the fiction that is constructed becomes absolutely compelling,” she says. But she does have a problem with films like Dhurandhar mainstreaming gory violence. “It is concerning,” she says, “because if films do reflect national sentiment, what does the affinity for violence convey in terms of major shifts in the sociocultural fabric?”

Be that as it may, the filmmaking fraternity is in awe of Dhar. “I believe [he] has completely and single-handedly changed the future of Indian cinema,” wrote Ram Gopal Varma in a long social media post. “He doesn’t direct scenes here... he engineers the states of minds of both the characters and us audience. This is a film that refuses to be polite. The writing cuts with intent, the staging breathes menace, and the silences are as weaponised as the thunderous sound effects.” Even director Anurag Kashyap, in his Letterboxd review of Part 1, said that, barring some dialogues, the filmmaking is top-notch and he admires Dhar’s “stubbornness”. “Agree or disagree with [the politics],” he writes, “the man is honest.”

Those who worked on the film saw the wave coming even if they couldn’t predict its sheer scale. National Award-winning sound designer Bishwadeep Chatterjee knows Dhar from when he assisted Vidhu Vinod Chopra on Eklavya (2007) and the “quiet determination” he showed. “He called me over to his house and made this beautiful AI presentation on how the characters [in Dhurandhar] would look, unravelling the entire gist of the film,” says Chatterjee, who also worked on Uri. “Amidst the whole chaos of ‘release date is coming!’, he’s Buddha. He’s like, ‘Ho jaayega’.”

BOLLYWOOD’S NEW OBSESSION

Even those who collaborated with Dhar for the first time came away impressed with the 43-year-old filmmaker. “Dhar’s vision was huge,” says Anand Bhanushali, MD & co-founder, philmCGI, one of the visual effects companies that worked on the duology. “I remember seeing the rushes in mid-2025 and had this gut feeling that the film is something different, it’s special.” Dhar and his team scouted nine countries before settling on Thailand for the location to set up Karachi’s Lyari. “Creating Karachi in India would have been a logistical nightmare. Just think about putting up Pakistani flags in Indian markets with about 800 people,” Kulthep Narula, COO, Benetone Films, who worked on the film, sais at an event recently. About 40 people from India and 100 from Thailand constructed the sets on a six-acre location in six weeks.

For Deshpande, Dhurandhar is amplification of what cinema needs to do: tell stories that have a purpose. For the makers, Dhurandhar’s global success is a matter of pride for India. “When we see what’s happening in the world and where India is, we always focus on the problems here. But don’t we have a responsibility to inspire our youth and make them bet on India, so the best brains don’t leave it?” she said. “It’s time to claim our narrative, not about religion and politics, but about India.” The reason, then, for Dhurandhar and its sequel becoming such a blockbuster success is not just the heady mix of patriotism, gripping brutality, vengeance and sacrifice that its makers tapped into but something deeper: the story of a nation repeatedly tested, bloodied, but never broken—an India that absorbs every blow, rises again and ultimately prevails.

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