Real wrestlers Babita & Geeta’s admirations for Reel wrestler Aamir Khan!

The trailer of Dangal has hit now with bang and Phogat sisters Babita and Geeta are all admirations for the man behind this saga - Aamir Khan and Mahavir Phogat! While the girls are thankful to Aamir for showcasing their journey and struggles on the big screen, Babita & Geeta credit their success to their father, Mahavir. 

“I’m very happy that Aamir Khan and the girls have portrayed our story so well onscreen. It seems like I’m watching myself,” told Geeta, adding that Aamir always made time for the family. “Woh jitney badey star hai, utne hi bade insaan bhi hai. Papa se milne ke liye shootingchhod dete the. (Despite being a star, he’s very humble. He used to stop the shooting to meet our father),” posted Geeta - a wrestler. 

“We’re excited. If people see a film about wrestling, they’ll want to know about the sport,” told Babita, who’s all admiration for Aamir. “He’s so down to earth. We’ve met three-four times since he invited us on his TV show and it’s always wonderful,” she further added. As for their depiction in the movie, the Commonwealth Games gold-medalist told, “When we were narrated the story by (director) Nitesh Tiwari, we loved the fact that there was nothing fake in it. It was all about what really happened in our lives.”

Open up about their father, Mahavir Phogat, Geeta shared how the sisters always wanted to keep long hair, but their father never allowed to do so. "Humne  kabhi masti toh ki nahi. We had short hair and people would get confused if we were a boy or a girl. He used to say, yah toh shauk pura kar lo, yah kushti kar lo. Papa has been very strict with us. He taught us that to achieve something in life you have to compromise on something.”

The inspirational story of Phogat sisters will be essayed on the big screen by actresses Fatima Sheikh and Sanya Malhotra. Dangal will release on December 23, 2016.

Aamir starrer Dangal’s an amazing journey from newspaper article to screen!

It's all the time enthralling story behind Aamir Khan's keenly expected Dangal. Not many know that back in 2012, it was a small article about Mahavir Singh Phogat in a leading newspaper which caught the attention of one of Disney's creative executives Divya Rao, and inspired her to imagine a film about the Phogats. The article was about Mahavir’s pronouncement to train his two daughters in wrestling, a game which is generally perceived as a man’s sport across the country, particularly in a state like Haryana. 

When Divya pitched Dangal’s tale to Siddharth Roy Kapur and other members of the Disney team, they promptly agreed to tell it on the big screen. The next step was to bring someone on board for penning down the story and directing it. It was then that Nitesh Tiwari came on board. Nitesh instantly saw heart and soul in the story and set off for Haryana with Divya to meet Mahavir Singh Phogat and his wrestler-daughters. 

As soon as the Phogats agreed to tell their story to the world and Nitesh had penned a script, Disney approached Aamir Khan to play the character of Mahavir Singh on the big screen. Khan loved Nitesh's narration immediately - and rest, as they say, is history!