Before Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan was Aditya Chopra's first choice in this critically acclaimed blockbuster film

This year belongs to Shah Rukh Khan as he made his comeback to the big screen after more than four years and has already delivered two highest-grossing films in his career and in Indian cinema overall - Pathaan and Jawan. His third release of the year, Dunki is also expected to create new box office records.

SRK has been a part of multiple superhits in the past too, but it was in 2007 when his blockbuster film also became his most-critically film. The sports drama Chak De! India featured him as Kabir Khan, who guides the Indian national women's hockey team to the World Cup victory as its coach.

But do you know that Aditya Chopra had first offered Chak De! India to Salman Khan? Yes, you read that right. Salman rejected the Shimit Amit directorial and then, another Khan took his place. The Tiger 3 actor had even revealed the reason why he did so when he was promoting his 2016 sports drama Sultan.

During the Sultan promotions, Salman said, "This was the first good sports film that came to me." When he was reminded that he was offered Chak De! India too, he first joked and said, "I left it because even Shah Rukh Khan should be a part of a few great films."

He then explained seriously, "When I was offered Chak De, my image was totally different as I was doing Partner and all those kind of films. My only thing in Chak De was that my fans would expect me to wear a wig and win the match for India which would not go for the film. That was not my genre at that point of time. It was more serious kind of film and I was doing more of a commercial kind of cinema which I am still doing. I would never move out of commercial cinema zone but it is just that there would be a lot of meaningful cinema in the commercial zone."

Apart from Shah Rukh Khan, the other stars in Chak De! India were the amazing girls who were starred as the Indian hockey team. These included Vidya Malvade, Shilpa Shukla, Sagarika Ghatge, Chitrashi Rawat, Tanya Abrol, Shubhi Mehta, and Anaitha Nair among others. Made on a budget of Rs 20 crore, the film collected Rs 102 crore at the global box office.

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