In 2016, Singh starred in Aditya Chopra's comedy-romance Befikre opposite Vaani Kapoor. He played Dharam Gulati, a stand-up comic whose romantic liaisons with Kapoor's character leads to conflict between them. Set in Paris, Befikre marked the fourth project to be directed by Chopra. Singh performed a nude scene for it--a rare occurrence in an Indian film. Jay Weissberg of Variety found the film to be an "overly energetic twist on the old friends with benefits theme" and criticised Singh's "manic behavior". It underperformed at the box office. After a year-long absence from the screen, Singh portrayed Alauddin Khilji, a ruthless Muslim king, in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period drama Padmaavat (2018), co-starring Deepika Padukone and Shahid Kapoor, which marked his third collaboration with Bhansali and Padukone. Right-wing Hindu groups speculated that the film distorted historical facts, and issued violent threats against the cast and crew. The film's release was deferred and was allowed for exhibition after several modifications were made to it. Ankur Pathak of HuffPost criticised the film's misogynistic and regressive themes, but praised Singh for his "astute brilliance" in depicting Khilji's bisexuality. Rajeev Masand opined that he "plays the part with the sort of grotesque flamboyance that makes it hard to look at anyone or anything else when he's on the screen". Padmaavat's production budget of Rs2 billion (US$31 million) made it the most expensive Hindi film ever made. With a worldwide gross of Rs5.44 billion (US$83 million), it ranks as Singh's highest-grossing release and is among India cinema's biggest grossers. As of January 2018, Singh will star opposite Alia Bhatt in Zoya Akhtar's Gully Boy, a musical based on the life of rappers living in Mumbai's ghettos. He will also star in Rohit Shetty's Simmba, a remake of the Telugu action film Temper, co-starring Sara Ali Khan. Singh has also committed to a biopic of the cricketer Kapil Dev, entitled 83.

Answer this question "was the film successful" by extracting the answer from the text above.
rare