The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2019–2022
Laal Singh Chaddha: Aamir Khan's ₹180cr remake that flopped in India
The official Hindi Forrest Gump remake cost ₹180 crore, grossed ₹129.6 crore worldwide — and became Aamir Khan's second consecutive flop.
Aamir Khan Productions · 2022-08-11
What happened
Laal Singh Chaddha — the official Hindi adaptation of Forrest Gump, starring Aamir Khan and produced by his own Aamir Khan Productions with Paramount and Viacom18 — was a decade in the making: Khan waited ten years to secure the rights and built the film as the biggest bet of his career, with a budget of ₹180 crore.
Released August 11, 2022, it grossed ₹69.92 crore in India and ₹59.72 crore overseas — ₹129.64 crore worldwide against its ₹180 crore budget. It was declared a box-office flop, Khan's second consecutive failure after Thugs of Hindostan (2018), and the first time in 22 years the star had two flops in a row.
The failure was cultural as much as financial: a Hindi remake of an American classic starring a Muslim actor in a Hindu-nationalist climate faced organized social-media boycotts, and the film's India gross was about a third of what a Khan film needed — the audience that had made him Bollywood's biggest star did not show up.
Why it happened
- The remake's premise had no local anchor: Forrest Gump's American history was replaced with Indian events, but the transplant could not carry the original's magic.
- The star's formula broke: Khan's films had relied on mass-audience trust, and after Thugs of Hindostan, the goodwill was thinner — a ₹180cr bet with no guarantee could not survive a weak opening.
- The boycott campaign priced the risk: social-media calls against the film turned a movie release into a political event, and the opening numbers showed the campaign worked.
The lesson
A decade of waiting is a liability, not an asset: Laal Singh Chaddha spent ten years building expectation and delivered a remake whose local magic never landed.
Sources
- Wikipedia — Laal Singh Chaddha
- BBC — Laal Singh Chaddha: How Aamir Khan adapted Forrest Gump to Bollywood
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