Recent years have seen a rise in Indian political biopics, including films on former PM Manmohan Singh and Indira Gandhi. Adding to this trend, Unni Mukandan announced ‘Maa Vande,’ a film on Narendra Modi, following Vivek Oberoi’s earlier venture. Recently, ‘Ajey: The Untold Story of Yogi,’ based on Yogi Adityanath’s biography, hit theaters after censor delays, earning ₹1.
In the past few years there has been a surge in films being made on Indian politician charting the recent Indian history be it Akshaye Khanna and Anupam Kher’s The Accidental Prime Minister based on former PM Manmohan Singh or Kangana Ranaut’s Emergency on the life of Indira Gandhi or Thalaivi based on J Jayalalithaa to name a few. On Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday, Malayalam actor Unni Mukandan best known for 2024’s hit film Marco announced his next film Maa Vande , chronicling the life of India’s current leader. Maa Vande would not be the first film on PM Modi, back in 2019 Vivek Oberoi has also made one. Though the trend with these films is that they usually don’t end up connecting with the audiences no matter how popular the leader is.Last Friday a film titled Ajey: The Untold Story of Yogi hit the theaters. It was based on the book by Shantanu Gupta, titled The Monk Who Became Chief Minister. The book is Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath’s biography. The film stars Anant Joshi as Yogi Adityanath while veteran actor Paresh Rawal plays his mentor Mahant Adityanath. Veteran TV director T Ravindra Gautam who is known for famous TV shows like Kasauti Zindagi Kay and Bade Achhe Lagte Hai had been roped to direct the film.. As per Sacnilk the film collected Rs 25 lakh on day 1 and witnessed a spike on day 2 to collect Rs 35 lakh and on day 3 the collection jumped higher to collect Rs 45 lakh. The film witnessed major drops on weekends with Monday collecting Rs 10 lakh, Tuesday Rs 16 lakh, Wednesday Rs 15 lakh and Thursday Rs 11 lakh. Thereby taking the overall collection of the film to Rs 1.57 crore. The film was supposed to release in August but due to its run-in with the Censor Board, the film was delayed and it finally released on 19th September. The journey ahead for the film is going to be an uphill task.
