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Dabangg () is a 2010 Indian Hindi-language action comedy film directed by Abhinav Kashyap and produced by Malaika Arora and Arbaaz Khan under Arbaaz Khan Productions with Dhilin Mehta under Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision. The film stars Salman Khan, Sonakshi Sinha, Arbaaz Khan and Sonu Sood in the lead roles, while Om Puri, Dimple Kapadia, Vinod Khanna, Anupam Kher, Mahesh Manjrekar and Mahie Gill feature in supporting roles. The film marks the debut of Sinha as an actress, Arbaaz Khan as a producer and Kashyap as a director. Arora makes a special appearance in the song "Munni Badnaam Hui".
Dabangg is set in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It was made with a budget of 30 crore and marketed at 12 crore. The film was shot primarily in the town of Wai in Maharashtra, while other major scenes were shot in the United Arab Emirates.
Dabangg was released during Eid al-Fitr on 10 September 2010 in nearly 2,100 cinemas worldwide, where it received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the performances of the cast (especially Khan and Sood), the action sequences, soundtrack and humour. It went on to gross () worldwide and became the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2010.
Dabangg has won several awards—the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment and six Filmfare Awards, including Best Film and Best Female Debut (Sinha). The film was remade in Tamil language as Osthe, with Sood reprising his role, and in Telugu language as Gabbar Singh. It was followed by two sequels: Dabangg 2 (2012) and Dabangg 3 (2019). The latter serves as a partial prequel, describing a flashback which formed the events of Dabangg.
A corrupt political leader named Chedi Singh meets Chulbul and both quickly become enemies. Makkhi asks Prajapati to arrange his marriage with Nirmala, but Prajapati refuses because he needs money to repay the loans he took to make his factory and believes that he can acquire money through his son marrying a rich girl. In desperate need of money, Makkhi steals some cash from Chulbul's cupboard and gives the stolen cash to Masterji, hoping that he will permit Makkhi to marry Nirmala.
Meanwhile, Chulbul proposes marriage to Rajjo, who rejects as she has to take care of her drunkard father Hariya. Chulbul arrives home to find his mother Naini Devi dead, where he goes to Prajapati to make peace as he is the only family left. However, Prajapati rejects and despises him as an outcast. Makkhi invites Chulbul to his marriage with Nirmala, where Chulbul convinces Hariya to marry Rajjo. Hariya commits suicide as he knows that Rajjo will not marry anyone while he is alive. Chulbul takes Rajjo to Makkhi's exuberant wedding. Realising that Makkhi has stolen his money to finance the wedding, Chulbul marries Rajjo in an impromptu ceremony. Masterji feels disgraced and cancels Makkhi's wedding with Nirmala.
Still feeling annoyed that Chulbul jeopardised his wedding, Makkhi beats up one of the workers in his factory due to a small mishap. The worker goes to the police station with his mother to file a complaint. Rather than simply ask Makkhi to apologise to the worker, Chulbul brutally beats up Makkhi in public to disgrace him. Chedi takes advantage of the situation and takes Makkhi along with Prajapati to the police station. Not wishing to aggravate the matter any further, Prajapati resolves the situation by accepting an apology. Chulbul meets a political leader named Dayal Sahu aka Dayal Babu, who also dislikes Chedi. With his help, Chulbul adulterates Chedi's breweries and wrongly frames him for it.
Enraged, Chedi burns Makkhi's factory where Prajapati suffers from a heart attack and is hospitalised. Makkhi goes to Chedi for help, where Chedi agrees to finance Prajapati's treatment if he delivers a crate of mangoes to Dayal Babu's house. Unbeknownst to Makkhi, Chedi has placed a bomb inside the crate, which explodes after he leaves, killing Dayal Babu. Chedi gives Makkhi a task to kill Chulbul. Makkhi accepts, but ends up confessing to Chulbul that Chedi made him plant the bomb unknowingly. Chulbul forgives him and reconciles with Prajapati. Chedi also reveals that he killed Naini to retrieve his money back from Chulbul. During a final confrontation between Chulbul and Chedi, Makkhi reveals to Chulbul that it was Chedi, who killed Naini. Chulbul finally kills Chedi by suffocating him with the exhaust pipe of a tractor and arranges Makkhi's marriage with Nirmala.
In April 2009, Sonakshi Sinha signed for her debut role. Salman had seen her at a function engaging in dancing and offered her the role. Speaking about it, she said that she had lost a weight of 30 kg over two years to prepare for her character of a village girl by "a combination of proper diet and vigorous exercise". She added that she had been "observing people and trying to pick up nuances" as a step of further preparation. Malaika Arora, who had performed a few item numbers in her career, most notably in Dil Se.., was confirmed to do the same in the film. This was the first of its kind in her home production.
The film, involving around five action sequences, was choreographed by S. Vijayan, who previously served as the stunt director of Wanted, and shot over 60 days. Later, special effects were incorporated into those scenes. The songs were choreographed by Raju Khan and Shabina Khan, while Farah Khan choreographed the item number, "Munni Badnaam Hui". The shooting was completed in early June 2010, and the film went into post-production. A party was held to commemorate the completion of the shooting and the success of the theatrical promo. It was attended by the main cast and crew.
Dabangg released worldwide on 10 September 2010. Before the film's theatrical release, a special screening of the film took place at Film City on 6 September 2010. The premiere of Dabangg was held in Mumbai on 9 September 2010. It opened up across 1,800 screens in India and around 300 screens overseas. The film was released in 2300 theatres worldwide. It was also screened in Norway at an international film festival. The film's DVDs and VCDs were launched by the Reliance Big Home Video on 12 October 2010. It was released on YouTube on 28 January 2011 for free viewing to audiences in India. The satellite rights were pre-sold for to Colors.
In a 4-star review for Koimoi, Komal Nahta ensured that the film would be a commercial success and said " Dabangg may be a routine subject but its other plus points will ensure that it proves a runaway hit". Kaveree Bamzai of India Today gave the film four stars while labelling it as "one Zandu Balm of a movie." Film critic Aniruddha Guha of Daily News and Analysis called the film "slightly mad, and terribly entertaining."
Mathures Paul of The Statesman gave the film 3.5 stars and commented, " Dabangg aligns itself with viewers frustrated by the nonexistence of uncomplicated heroism on screen." In a 3-star review for Rediff.com, Abhishek Mande stated " Dabangg is not a movie for non-Salman fans. But for those who worship him it's a film you simply cannot afford to miss." Anupama Chopra of NDTV gave 3 stars and stated that the film is watchable for the "sheer pleasure of watching Salman Khan in top form". Sukanya Venkataraghavan of Filmfare also rated 3-stars, and praised Khan's performance.
Gaurav Malani of Times Internet was critical towards the film's story, remarking "the film doesn't care a damn for coming up with any innovative storyline." Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN panned the film's screenplay, but praised Khan's performance. Shobhaa De of the Bangalore Times was critical, concluding "Let's hand it to Salman who has pulled off the stunts and pelvic thrusts. Nothing new there. But it is the naughty self-parodying, which is so camp, so out there, which delivers the biggest punch. What's left for this guy now – all he needs is a cape. And he can call himself Superman."
Dabangg netted on the second Friday, on Saturday and on Sunday, for a second weekend, a drop of around 50% from the opening weekend. In its second week, the film earned , taking the total nett collections to in two weeks, thus becoming the second highest-grossing film of all time in two weeks. The distributor share of Dabangg was declared to be —the second highest in Bollywood. Dabangg collected during the third week and in its fourth week, taking the domestic nett collections to . The domestic nett collections in eleven weeks was . It eventually progressed to .
In the United States, Dabangg collected $628,137 from 62 screens in its opening weekend and $1,068,589 at the end of its second weekend. In the United Arab Emirates, it collected 3.2 million Dirhams in the opening weekend, and $1,550,000 at the end of the second weekend. Dabangg collected a total of $5.50 million, making it the fifth highest-grossing in United Arab Emirates with a $2 million gross. In the United Kingdom, it collected £332,673 from 41 screens in its opening weekend and £570,566 by the end of its second weekend. In Australia, the film collected $126,000 from 14 screens in the opening weekend, and A$272,909 at the end of its second weekend. In Mauritius and South Africa, it collected US$25,000 each in its opening weekend. In Fiji, the film collected US$20,000 the opening weekend. In other territories of Europe and Africa, the film collected $100,000 in its opening weekend.
Before release, critic and writer Shobhaa De called for a boycott of Dabangg, due to Salman's comments on the 2008 Mumbai attacks. She criticised it as "arrogance, ignorance and plain stupidity." This sparked off a fight with the producers via Twitter, and continued after her negative review of the film. Anurag Kashyap, brother of Abhinav Kashyap, tweeted "Salman khan thinks he made my brother's life.. Hope he can do the same for his brother Arbaaz with Dabangg 2." This was taken as "slamming" Salman and resulted in Arbaaz retorting back by referring to the comment as "attitude" instead of "gratitude". However, Anurag later apologised for his remarks, which Arbaaz accepted.
Film critic and trade analyst Komal Nahta also compared these campaign to the marketing gimmicks used by Rajkumar Hirani in Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003), Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006) and 3 Idiots (2009), where the characters Munna Bhai and Ranchoddas Chanchad are promoted to pull crowd till a time they become an established brand. He added "All the stars and producers have realized the value of marketing and promotion ... In fact theses gimmicks have become as important as, say, making a good film."
10 years after the film's release, Arbaaz Khan had stated in an interview that the film's budget was hiked from to , leading to few losses for him, but after the monumental success, he paid the salary for Salman Khan. In January 2022, the official merchandise of the film featuring movie clips, posters, and stills, among other collectables were released through non-fungible tokens (NFT). It was headlined by Salman Khan-backed BollyCoin in collaboration with the technology-backed marketplace creator NFTically. It was featured in Time Out's "100 Best Bollywood Films".
While the film was appreciated for its commercial elements, the flip side, it was criticised for the misogyny, objectification of women and the blatant sexism of the character Chulbul Pandey. In 2021, Mumbai Police shared few dialogues and quotes from the film denouncing misogyny.
In November 2021, director Rohit Shetty had planned for a potential inclusion of Chulbul Pandey, Khan's character in his Cop Universe franchise, and work on the film might commence only after completing Ranveer Singh's Cirkus. Later, that month, a fourth instalment of the franchise titled Dabangg 4 was announced with Khan deciding to make few changes on the script and the character, in order to be raw and realistic, which followed after the critical response of his role in (2021). Later, impressed by the narration of the script, Tigmanshu Dhulia was roped in to direct the film in late-December.
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