Claim: R. Madhavan was in the cast of a movie.

3 Idiots is a 2009 Indian coming of age comedy drama film co-written , edited , and directed by Rajkumar Hirani and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra . Abhijat Joshi wrote the screenplay . It was inspired by the novel Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat . The film stars Aamir Khan , Kareena Kapoor , R. Madhavan , Sharman Joshi , Omi Vaidya , Parikshit Sahni and Boman Irani .   Upon release , the film was the highest-grossing film in its opening weekend in India and had the highest opening day collections for an Indian film up until that point . It also held the record for the highest net collections in the first week for a Bollywood film . It also became one of the few Indian films to become successful at the time in East Asian markets such as China , eventually bringing its overseas total to more than US$ 65 million at the time -- the highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time in overseas markets , before being overtaken by Chennai Express in 2013 .   The film is distinctive for featuring real inventions by little-known people in India 's backyards . The brains behind the innovations were Remya Jose , a student from Kerala , who created the pedal operated washing-machine ; Mohammad Idris , a barber from Hasanpur Kalan in Meerut district in Uttar Pradesh , who invented a bicycle-powered horse clipper ; and Jahangir Painter , a painter from Maharashtra , who made the scooter-powered flour mill . The subtitled version of the film grew popular in South Asia , especially China , Malaysia , Singapore and the Philippines .   This film was remade in Tamil as Nanban -LRB- 2012 -RRB- which also received critical praise and commercial success . It has also been announced that there will be a Chinese remake of the film produced by Stephen Chow and that there are plans for a Hollywood remake produced in the United States . A Telugu remake was planned despite Nanban having a Telugu dubbed version titled Snehitudu . 3 Idiotas a Mexican remake will be released in 2017 .