Salman Khan's Sultan was earlier called Dangal, reveals Ali Abbas Zafar

Mumbai: Apart from the film being about wrestling, Aamir Khan’s ‘Dangal’ and Salman Khan’s ‘Sultan’ also shared another main factor with each other. Apparently, Salman’s ‘Sultan’ was earlier titled as ‘Dangal’.

As bizarre as it may sound but when ‘Sultan’s filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar wrote the film’s first draft in 2012, he had titled it ‘Dangal’. In a recent interview, the filmmaker revealed that he had no idea that there was any other film being made on wrestling. So the first 10 pages of ‘Sultan’ that he emailed to Aditya Chopra were titled as ‘Dangal’.

The filmmaker further accepted that though ‘Sultan’ is a better title for the film as it is also the name of the main character, he found ‘Dangal’ a more apt title as it means wrestling competition.

When the filmmaker travelled to Haryana in 2012 for the film’s research, he found locals addressing wrestling matches as Dangal really interesting. The filmmaker liked the name's simplicity and found it charming. Ali Abbas Zafar thought Dangal would be an honest title for the film.

But when Sultan was picked as film's title, another hurdle waited in line for the makers as the rights of ‘Sultan' title were with Ramesh Taurani. But for Salman's sake, Taurani gave it up and soon things fell in place.