page_title: M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story
section_title: Writing
hierarchical_section_title: M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story / Production / Writing
caption_attribution_description: en:Mahendra Singh Dhoni at en:Adelaide Oval
context_page_description: M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story is a 2016 Indian Hindi-language biographical sports film written and directed by Neeraj Pandey. It is based on the life of former Test, ODI and T20I captain of the Indian national cricket team, Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The film stars Sushant Singh Rajput as Dhoni, along with Disha Patani, Kiara Advani, and Anupam Kher. The film chronicles the life of Dhoni from a young age through a series of life events.
  The idea of the biopic was put forward by Dhoni's manager, Arun Pandey, after encountering an incident at an airport after the 2011 Cricket World Cup Final. Development began two years later, with the consent of Dhoni. Neeraj Pandey was later approached to helm the film while he was working on Baby. Pandey recruited a number of people for researching into Dhoni's background and his life events. Dhoni eventually became a consultant on the film.
  The film was released on 30 September 2016 by Fox Star Studios and received the widest release ever for a Bollywood film across 61 countries.
context_section_description: Pandey was attracted to Dhoni's story not because of his successful cricket career, saying that "it's foolish to chase MS Dhoni's life story only because it's about cricket," but rather to instances and factors that made him the person he is today. Dhoni wasn't involved in writing the script. Pandey recruited a team of researchers who collated data and background information while the director was busy directing Baby (2015). The filmmakers decided that they would only green-light the film once they had a convincing story to tell after the research. Pandey met with Dhoni numerous times over a span of eight months and by the eighth month of their meetings, in 2014, the main arc of the story began to form. Their first meeting took place in Delhi during a cricket match. During their sporadic meetings, Pandey chose not to record and tape their conversations which prompted Dhoni to open up more.
  Arun Pandey says 98% of the content in the film is reality. The team undertook two years of research on the various incidents and how they took place. Pandey says "such authenticity would be hard to find even in Hollywood." Pandey revealed several prominent aspects of Dhoni's life that were hidden before including the fact that Dhoni initially disdained cricket and had a predilection for football instead, his signature "helicopter shot" was taught to him by his friend Santosh Lal, he likes women who don't recognise him, he and Yuvraj Singh had close ties even before their respective stardom and it was Dhoni who ousted Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid from the team since he wanted to build a young team for the 2011 World Cup with better fielders and he wasn't too happy with the 'fitness' levels of the aforementioned cricketers.
  Pandey decided to end the film with the 2011 Cricket World Cup Final since he felt "the arc of the story had a natural high at the 2011 World Cup win." He knew that they were chronicling almost 30 years of a sportsman's life "in a highly compressed manner" and said that had he extended the script to his sudden retirement during an ongoing series, the run time of the film would shoot up to six hours.
caption: Movie is based on real life struggle of Indian cricketer MS Dhoni.
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