Sikandar director AR Murugadoss opened up about working with Salman Khan in the actioner and said that it was not easy to work with him. The director said that Salman would turn up on set at 8 pm even to shoot day scenes.
In an interview with Valaipechu Voice, the filmmaker shared, “It's not easy to shoot with a star. Even day scenes, we have to shoot at night because he turns up to sets only by 8 PM. We are people who are used to shooting right from early mornings, but that's not how things work there.”
He added, “If there were four kids in a scene, we would have to shoot with them at 2AM, even if it's the shot of them returning from school! They would become tired by that time and usually dozed off."
In the same interview, Murugadoss said that he couldn’t execute the film well. “In the film, when the king loses his wife, her organs are donated to three different people. He then seeks them out, trying to fulfil the things he couldn’t do for her. In the process, he befriends an entire village. The story was emotional, but I couldn’t execute it well.”
Comparing Salman’s Sikandar and Aamir Khan’s Ghajini, Murugadoss reflected on why the latter had succeeded but the former failed. “I could pull off Ghajini because it was a remake, not an original script. I had already done it before, so I had complete command. With Sikandar, that wasn’t the case. I’m not saying I won’t return to Hindi cinema; I definitely will if I find my comfort zone. But when the audience can’t connect with my thinking, it affects me deeply,” he said.
Sikandar also starred Rashmika Mandanna, Sathyaraj and Sharman Joshi in pivotal roles. It was released in theatres on April 29 and turned out to be a box office failure.
