Ghajini (2008 film)

Ghajini is a 2008 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film written and directed by A. R. Murugadoss, jointly produced by Allu Aravind, Tagore Madhu and Madhu Mantena. A remake of Murugadoss’s own 2005 Tamil film of the same name which in turn is inspired by the 2000 film Memento and 1951 British film Happy Go Lovely.[5][6]

It stars Aamir Khan, Asin reprising her original role in her Hindi film debut, Jiah Khan and Pradeep Rawat, co-starring Tinnu Anand, Sunil Grover, Khalid Siddiqui and Riyaz Khan. The score and soundtrack were composed by A. R. Rahman, while Aamir co-wrote an altered climax.[7] Murugadoss, had written half of the film’s story when he watched Memento, and claimed to merely use the character due to his short term memory loss condition.[8] In the film, a businessman suffering from anterograde amnesia sets out to avenge his girlfriend with the aid of photographs from a Polaroid Instant camera and permanent tattoos on his body.[9]

Released theatrically on 25 December 2008, Ghajini became the highest-grossing Indian film of the year, and the first Bollywood film to cross the ₹100 crore mark domestically, creating the 100 Crore Club.[10] Ghajini’s paid preview collections were ₹ 27 million.[11]

It went on to become the highest-grossing Indian film of all time, until it was surpassed by Aamir’s next, 3 idiots (2009), the following year and then by Shah Rukh Khan’s Chennai Express (2013). Aamir’s character was featured in a 3D video game titled Ghajini – The Game, which is based on the film.[12] Suriya, who played the protagonist in the Tamil original, lauded the film and found it an overall better version.[13]

Khan found a force of his own kind with Ghajini, as he followed it up with back to back record grossers and helped the industry touch new business benchmarks with films like 3 Idiots (2009), Dhoom 3 (2013), PK (2014) & Dangal (2016).[14]