Sikandar Director AR Murugadoss Says It Wasn’t Easy To Work With Salman Khan: ‘Turns Up To Sets Only By 8 PM…’
Salman Khan’s action film Sikandar hit theaters in March 2025 but didn’t perform well at the box office despite high expectations. Director AR Murugadoss recently shared his experience working with Salman in an interview with Valaipechu Voice.
Murugadoss admitted that collaborating with the star was challenging. He explained that Salman would arrive on set at 8 PM, forcing the crew to shoot day scenes at night. He said, “It’s not easy to shoot with a star. Even day scenes, we have to shoot at night because he turns up on set only by 8 PM. We are used to shooting right from early mornings, but that’s not how things work there.”
This schedule affected other actors too. Murugadoss recalled, “If there were four kids in a scene, we would have to shoot with them at 2 AM, even if it’s the shot of them returning from school! They would become tired by that time and usually dozed off.”
Murugadoss also took responsibility for the film’s poor performance, admitting he couldn’t bring his vision to life. He described the story’s emotional core: “The base story was very emotional. It’s about a king who doesn’t truly understand his wife. Many of us are like that, whether it’s with our mother, wife, or friends, we don’t value relationships until they’re gone. In the film, after the king loses his wife, her organs are donated to three people. He then seeks them out to fulfil what he couldn’t do for her. In the process, he befriends an entire village. The story had heart, but I couldn’t execute it well.”
Sikandar marked Murugadoss’s return to Bollywood after nine years. His last Hindi film, Akira, a remake of the 2011 Tamil film Mouna Guru, starred Sonakshi Sinha, Anurag Kashyap, and Konkona Sen Sharma, but earned only Rs. 43.90 crore against a Rs. 30 crore budget.
#ARMurugadoss on #Sikandar Failure:
“It’s not easy to shoot with #SalmanKhan. Even for day scenes, we had to shoot at night because he would arrive on set only after 8 PM. We are used to starting early in the mornings, but that’s not how things worked there.
If a scene involved… pic.twitter.com/z4r8aSKJ1o
— Gulte (@GulteOfficial) August 19, 2025
In Sikandar, Salman plays Sanjay “Sikandar” Rajkot, a man driven by his wife’s death to protect three people who received her donated organs, putting him at odds with a vengeful politician. The film also stars Rashmika Mandanna, Kajal Aggarwal, Sathyaraj, Sharman Joshi, and Prateik Babbar. It received mixed-to-negative reviews and earned Rs. 184.6 crore worldwide against a Rs. 200 crore budget, making it a box office flop.
Salman’s next project is Battle Of Galwan, directed by Apoorva Lakhia. The war film, based on the 2020 Galwan Valley conflict between India and China, is highly anticipated.
See Also: Sikandar Director AR Murugadoss Reacts To Failure Of Salman Khan’s Movie: ‘I Could Pull Off Ghajini Because…’