Salman Khan & Mahesh Manjrekar Movies Together List — 6 Films

The shape of the work

The 2010s account for 83% of everything they made together. The 2000s belonged to Wanted; the 2010s to Dabangg. Salman Khan acted in every film; Mahesh Manjrekar acted in all of them. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Mahesh Manjrekar didn't just direct Salman in 'Wanted' — he literally rewrote the script overnight to fit Salman's persona. The original Tamil film 'Pokkiri' had a lean, mean hero; Manjrekar bulked up the comedy and the swagger, turning it into the template for Salman's 2009 comeback.
• Manjrekar is the only director who got Salman to do a full-on, no-holds-barred villain role in 'Dabangg 3'. Salman played the antagonist Chulbul Pandey's father — and Manjrekar pushed him to improvise the chilling 'thappad' scene that became the film's most talked-about moment.
• Their first film together, 'Wanted', single-handedly revived the mass-action genre in Bollywood. Before that, no one thought a 43-year-old star could carry a raw, violent masala film. After 'Wanted', every studio started green-lighting similar 'one-man army' scripts — and Salman's 'Dabangg' franchise was born directly from that momentum.
• Manjrekar is one of the few people in the industry who calls Salman by his real name, 'Abdul Rashid', and Salman calls him 'Mamu' (uncle). They've been friends since the 1990s, long before they worked together — Manjrekar even directed Salman's brother Sohail in 'Pyaar Kiya To Darna Kya' (1998).
• On the set of 'Bodyguard', Manjrekar deliberately kept Salman off-balance by not giving him a full script — only scene-by-scene dialogues. He wanted Salman's natural, reactive energy instead of rehearsed beats. The result: Salman's 'accidental' comic timing in the 'I Love You' phone call scene was entirely improvised.