Shazia Iqbal, the director of the Siddhant Chaturvedi-Triptii Dimri starrer Dhadak 2, recently revealed that the film's makers had tentatively titled the film Panther. In a recent conversation, film critic Sucharita Tyagi asked Shazia what its title would have been if not for Dhadak 2, and the director said that Panther was its title at "a very early stage" of production. The director said that it was titled tentatively after the Dalit Panther Movement. "The team of the group that Shekhar (Priyank Tiwari) runs was called Dalit Panther, and that's why Neelesh's (Siddhant) journey was about becoming a panther."
Interestingly, even the film's lead actor Siddhant was not aware of it. The moment Shazia made the revelation, he said, "Wow, I love this. I did not know this."
Siddhant Chaturvedi also revealed that he could not consider it a second part to 2018's Dhadak, also a remake of the Marathi film Sairat. "I feel this whole film is talking about identity. And firstly, it is a remake, so we are already burdened with something. Then it is a sequel. So where did our identity go?" The actor said that the title and the concept of it being a sequel "never grew on" him.
Before its release, the film's producer Karan Johar and his Dharma Productions banner faced a lot of flak from audiences, who suspected that it would be a typical commercial entertainer based on a nuanced, original film such as Pariyerum Perumal. However, the film earned unanimous praise from the critics for its nuanced depiction of social issues. In our review, critic Kartik Bhardwaj wrote, "Dhadak 2 is miles ahead of its predecessor Dhadak (2018) which was a watered-down remake of the Marathi film Sairat (2016). It is a momentous start for the mainstream Hindi film, a necessary plunge into the caste dynamics of love stories, which have been the USP of Bollywood for decades."
