Rajkumar Hirani has publicly attributed Dunki's underwhelming reception to audiences lacking personal experience with visa struggles. The internet has pushed back sharply, arguing the director is deflecting creative accountability. The episode exposes a deeper bollywood pattern: legacy filmmakers whose brand once guaranteed box-office gold now struggling to reconcile their instincts with a changed audience.
Here is a fact that would have been unthinkable a decade ago: rajkumar hirani is explaining himself. Not at a masterclass, not in the warm glow of a retrospective — but in damage-control mode, parsing why his latest film didn't land. The man whose every release from Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. to Sanju arrived pre-anointed as a blockbuster has done something his filmography never required before: he has offered an excuse. And the excuse, as it turns out, is you.
In recent remarks widely covered by india Today and CNN-News18, Hirani suggested that Dunki — his 2023 collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan — didn't connect because most indian audiences simply haven't experienced the visa and immigration struggles the film dramatises. The logic is seductive in its simplicity: the subject was too niche, the empathy gap too wide. It also happens to be the precise argument that tells you a filmmaker has stopped listening.
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The internet, predictably and correctly, pounced. "Dunki flopped as most of indians don't face visa issues," one widely shared post paraphrased, before adding with lethal sarcasm that by that logic, most indians are also not R&AW spies — yet Pathaan worked just fine.
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The Relatability Defence and Its Fatal Flaw
Let's take Hirani's argument at face value for a moment, because dismantling it is instructive. Most indians have never been to space, yet Mission Mangal was a hit. Most indians are not gangsters, yet the Gangs of Wasseypur films became cultural touchstones. Most indians have never wrestled competitively, yet Dangal is one of the highest-grossing indian films ever made. The "relatability" defence has never held water in cinema anywhere on Earth, and Hirani — who once made an entire country weep over an alien who couldn't phone home — knows it.
What makes his deflection so revealing is not that it's wrong, but that it's new. For two decades, the Hirani brand operated on a simple, almost magical contract: he picked a social issue, wrapped it in crowd-pleasing warmth, cast a megastar, and audiences showed up as if contractually obligated. 3 idiots (₹395 crore worldwide, per box office India) didn't need audiences to have attended an indian engineering college to feel the pressure. PK didn't require viewers to be atheists. The films worked because Hirani's storytelling made the specific universal. That alchemy is what broke down in Dunki — and blaming the audience's lack of visa trauma is a way of not saying so.
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The Numbers Tell Their Own Story
Dunki was not a disaster by any ordinary metric. According to trade reports, the film earned approximately ₹230 crore worldwide — a number most directors would celebrate with champagne. But this was a rajkumar hirani film starring Shah Rukh Khan, released during the same year SRK's Pathaan breached ₹1,000 crore and Jawan crossed ₹650 crore. Against that backdrop, ₹230 crore looked less like a result and more like a verdict. The audience didn't reject the subject; they rejected the execution — the tonal lurches between comedy and tragedy, the meandering second half, the sense that a master craftsman had, for the first time, not earned his climax.
The 'Blame the Viewer' Reflex: A bollywood Epidemic
Hirani is hardly the first to reach for this particular coping mechanism. bollywood in the 2020s has developed a visible pattern: when a prestige film underperforms, the post-mortem blames the audience's taste, piracy, the cricket calendar, or OTT fatigue — anything but the screenplay. It is a reflex that insulates the creative class from the one feedback loop that matters, and it is accelerating precisely as audiences have more options than ever. A viewer in 2026 has Korean thrillers, tamil actioners, malayalam slow-burns, and an infinite OTT scroll competing for the same two hours. The days when a big name and a good heart guaranteed a full house are over — and no amount of "they just didn't understand it" will restart the clock.
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One social media user's sardonic observation captured the mood: pairing Hirani with siddharth anand as directors who "truly understood" cinema was clearly meant as backhanded commentary on how even the industry's supposed auteurs now share space with its most commercially mechanical filmmakers — and neither camp seems to understand why audiences are walking away.
What Dunki's Misfire Really Reveals
The deeper story here isn't about one film. It's about the end of the director-as-brand-guarantee model that bollywood has relied on for decades. There was a time when "A rajkumar hirani Film" on a poster was the most powerful marketing line in hindi cinema — more persuasive than any star's name. That line now needs an asterisk, and Hirani is not alone. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Rohit Shetty, Aanand L. Rai — every legacy director who built a formula in the 2010s is discovering that formulas have expiry dates. The audience hasn't gotten dumber or more alien; it has gotten wider, more polyglot, and brutally impatient with anything that feels like it was made for the audience of five years ago.
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The question Hirani should be asking is not "why didn't they relate?" but "why didn't I make them relate?" — because that was always, always the job. The entire Hirani method was about engineering empathy at industrial scale: simplifying a complex issue until an autorickshaw driver and an IIT professor both left the theatre with wet eyes. If that engine failed on Dunki, the diagnosis belongs to the engine, not the road.
Can Hirani Course-Correct — or Is This the New Normal?
The answer matters beyond one career. Hirani's next project — widely reported to be in development — will arrive carrying the weight of Dunki's reputation and the internet's very long memory. Fans are still asking whether Munna Bhai 3 is coming; per multiple trade reports, Hirani has acknowledged interest but no confirmed timeline. If he returns to a beloved franchise, the safety net of nostalgia might hold — but it will also confirm that the most "original" filmmaker in Bollywood's mainstream now needs the comfort of a sequel. And if he tries something new, every frame will be measured against the question he planted himself: does the audience "get" it?
There is, of course, a simpler path. Make a film so good that nobody needs to be told why it worked. Hirani has done it at least four times. The tragedy of his Dunki defence isn't that he's wrong about immigration being a tough sell — it's that he used to be the guy who could sell anything. Admitting that the magic slipped, rather than suggesting the audience stood in the wrong spot, would be the most Hirani thing he could do: honest, warm, and quietly devastating.
Instead, the internet got an excuse. And the internet, as always, has receipts.
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Key Takeaways
- Rajkumar Hirani attributed Dunki's underperformance to audiences' inability to relate to visa and immigration struggles, per india Today and CNN-News18 reports.
- Social media users sharply rejected the argument, pointing out that hit films routinely deal with subjects outside everyday viewer experience — from space missions to espionage.
- Dunki earned approximately ₹230 crore worldwide, a respectable figure for most films but a significant underperformance relative to Shah Rukh Khan's 2023 benchmarks of Pathaan (~₹1,000 crore) and Jawan (~₹650 crore).
- The 'blame the viewer' reflex is becoming a pattern among legacy bollywood directors grappling with the collapse of the director-as-brand-guarantee model.
- Hirani's next move — whether a munna Bhai 3 sequel or an original project — will be a litmus test for whether legacy hindi cinema directors can adapt or are locked into defending past formulas.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did rajkumar hirani say Dunki didn't connect with audiences?
In interviews reported by india Today and CNN-News18, Hirani suggested that most indian viewers couldn't relate to the visa and immigration struggles depicted in Dunki, implying the subject matter was too niche for mainstream emotional connection.
Was Dunki a hit or a flop?
Dunki earned approximately ₹230 crore worldwide, per trade reports. While respectable in absolute terms, it significantly underperformed relative to expectations set by Hirani's track record and Shah Rukh Khan's 2023 blockbusters Pathaan and Jawan.
Is munna Bhai 3 coming?
rajkumar hirani has acknowledged interest in a third munna Bhai film in multiple interviews, but as of 2026, no confirmed production timeline or official announcement has been made.
Which is the most successful film of Rajkumar Hirani?
3 idiots remains Hirani's highest-grossing and most culturally enduring film, having earned approximately ₹395 crore worldwide per box office india, though PK also crossed ₹300 crore domestically.
Is Dunki based on a real story?
Dunki draws inspiration from the real phenomenon of 'donkey flights' — the dangerous, often illegal immigration routes used by people from punjab and other regions to reach countries like Canada, the UK, and the US.
How much did Shah Rukh Khan earn from Dunki?
Exact fee details are not officially disclosed. Per trade reports, Khan's remuneration for major 2023 releases was structured as a combination of upfront fees and profit-sharing, though Dunki's relatively modest returns would have affected the latter component.
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