Mir Ranjan Negi - Chak de India

Negi would later become involved in the development of the 2007 Bollywood film, Chak De India. The screenplay for Chak De India was written by Bollywood screenwriter Jaideep Sahani. Sahani had read a small article about the winning of the Gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games by the India women's national field hockey team and thought that the premise would make an interesting film. Negi has often been compared with Kabir Khan in the media.

On this connection Negi, himself, would later comment, "This movie is not a documentary of Mir Ranjan Negi's life. It is in fact the story of a team that becomes a winning lot from a bunch of hopeless girls There is nothing called World Championships in international hockey. It would be stupid to believe that Yash Raj Films would pump in Rs.45 crores to make a documentary on me. So it's illogical that it is a documentation of my life."

Sahani further stated in an interview with The Hindu:

I felt why has the girls’ team been given so little coverage. I shared the idea with Aditya (Chopra). He liked it and said stop everything else and concentrate on it. I started my research by spending time with hockey players It’s just a matter of chance that Negi's story matches with Kabir Khan. There are many cases, like in Colombia, football players are killed for not performing well for the club. I had no idea about Negi’s story while writing the script, and he joined us after the script was ready. In fact, his name was suggested by M.K. Kaushik, who was the coach of the team that won the Commonwealth Games’ gold. On day one, when Negi read the script, he cried and it was then that we came to know about his story.

Sahani also stated in another interview with NDTV.com that the script was conceived before he met Negi:

"Our script was written a year and a half back. It is very unfortunate that something, which is about women athletes, has just started becoming about Negi. And if you would go and ask Negi, he would probably tell you that he came and read the script that was written a year and a half back, and he started crying. Next day, he came and said look, it had happened to me also."

Both Kaushik and Negi did influence the development of the film after being approached by Sahini. Sahini first met with Kaushik and later recalled that, "M K Kaushik and his girls taught us all we knew about hockey. Then he recommended Negi to us, because when we finished writing and finished casting, we needed someone to train the girls. Negi assembled a team of hockey players to train the girls." Kaushik also states in the same interview that, "I taught him everything about the game, starting from how the camp is conducted, how the girls come from different backgrounds and cultures, the psychological factors involved. Also how the coach faces pressure to select girls from different states and teams." Sahini also contacted Negi and asked him to coach the actors portraying the hockey team. While not initially enthusiastic about being involved in the film, Negi changed his mind after reading the screenplay. He acted as the coach and trainer for the cast stating, "I trained the girls for six months. Waking up at 4, travelling from Kandivili to Churchgate. We would retire around 11 in the night. It was tiring. But we were on a mission They couldn’t run; couldn’t hold the hockey sticks. I ensured none of them cut their nails or eyebrows (as the players do). The girls have worked very hard. I salute them." Some of the actors however, such as Chitrashi, Sandia, and Raynia were cast because they are actual hockey players. Negi also had to train Shahrukh Khan for the film stating, "I had to plan every hockey move shown in the movie, including the penalty stroke that SRK missed. That shot alone took us nearly 20 hours as I was keen that it should be very realistic. I took the help of a lot of my former teammates. But more importantly, it was so easy working with SRK. He is unbelievably modest and was willing to do as many re-takes as we wanted."