Salman Khan's Dabangg 3 trimmed down by nine minutes after facing backlash over long runtime

Salman Khan's cop drama Dabangg 3, which hit the screens on 20 December, has been trimmed by almost nine minutes owing to the criticism for being too long. The film which sees Salman reprise his cult favorite role of Chulbul Panday, is directed by Prabhu Deva.

Dabangg 3 reportedly has too many songs and was criticised majorly because it served as a hindrance in the narrative, writes News18 as reported by Indo Asian News Service.

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As per to a source quoted in Bollywood Hungama, "Out of nine minutes, approximately eight minutes have been removed from the first half. The song 'Awara', featuring Salman and Saiee Manjrekar, has been edited out. Also, their other song 'Naina Lade' has been slightly trimmed. Moreover, a few comedy scenes didn't elicit the desired laughs from the moviegoers. Those too, have been chucked out from the revised version."

The song featuring Sonakshi Sinha, who plays the role of Rajjo in the franchise, has not been axed.

"The viewers majorly had issues with the first half being too long. So most of the trimming was done in the pre-interval sequence. As for the second half, a few scenes have been shortened," the source said.

Apart from Salman and Sonakshi, Arbaaz Khan portrays Makkhi, and Vinod Khanna's brother Pramod plays the character of Chulbul's father Prajapati Pandey. Kannada actor Sudeep is also a part of the film.

According to trade experts, Dabangg 3 which had a decent opening day, earned Rs 49.25 crore after two days. The film earned Rs 24.50 cr on Friday, Rs 24.75 cr on Saturday, thus taking its entire collection closer to Rs 50 crore.