Munnabhai MBBS ' is considered a cult film today and one of the best movies of Hindi cinema. The sequel to the movie, ' Lage Raho Munnabhai ' also did exceptionally well. The dialogues and moments from Munnabhai remain memorable over the years, for instance, 'Jhadu Ki Jhappi'.
However, did you know that the film had opened to empty theatres and was actually a flop in its opening weekend? Producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra revealed that he lost money on the film initially. He said during a chat with Bollywood Hungama that the first response to 'Munnabhai MBBS' was not as expected. It opened to empty theatres and nobody went to watch it.
Thus Rajkumar Hiraniw as upset thinking that Chopra lost a lot of money. "This is when I offered Rs 11,000 to Hirani, but he refused to take anything." Vinod Chopra also asked Raju to many another film and offered him Rs 4 crore for the same as he thought he had made a reat film.
Chopra added that he did not care if 'Munnabhai' worked or no, he wanted Hirani to make another film for him. "I didn’t really wait for the film to become a success for me to make another film,” he said. Further recalling the scenario at that time, the producer-director said that one of the distributors in Tamil Nadu who had agreed to distribute the film first, later refused to do it.
Hence, he called his distributor friend Shyam Shroff and got a show added to Satyam cinema which is quite popular in Tamil Nadu. Eventually, the team ended up earning Rs 1.67 crore from that.