Madhukar "Madhu" Bhagla (Ishaan Khatter), a young college student hailing from a middle class family, wins a competitive eating contest and receives its prize from Parthavi Singh (Janhvi Kapoor), a strong, rich, independent girl from a political family who studies in the same college as Madhu. His friend Purshottam (Shridhar Watsar) later finds Parthavi bathing in a lake and informs Madhu of the same. Madhu impresses Parthavi, but incurs a minor injury. The two begin to have feelings for each other, but are unaware of it.

Madhu goes back to his family dhaba where his father makes him promise to stay away from Parthavi since she hails from a powerful, affluent upper-caste family. Madhu ignores Parthavi at college, but she later catches Madhu stalking her. The two admit their love for each other and begin meeting secretly. Madhu asks Parthavi for a kiss, but the latter dares him to come to her brother Roop's birthday party. They passionately kiss at the party, but are discovered by Parthavi's family members. Her brother and father, politician Ratan Singh (Ashutosh Rana), thrash Madhu and his friends, but are told by the inspector to wait for the election results before any severe action.

Once the elections are over, Madhu and his friends are arrested on false charges registered by Parthavi's father. Parthavi pleads with her father to release Madhu and his friends. In an ensuing scuffle, she manages to get hold of a gun and threatens to shoot herself if Madhu isn’t freed. Madhu runs up to her and together, they elope. With the police on their trail, Madhu and Parthavi board a train to Mumbai, where Madhu contacts his maternal uncle and the two travel to Nagpur.

Madhu’s uncle advises them to go to Kolkata for the time being. In Kolkata, they rent a small room for living; Madhu starts working in a roadside restaurant after learning Bengali while Parthavi finds work at a call centre. One day, Madhu goes to her office to gift her a new phone bought from his hard-earned money. Madhu sees Parthavi happy with her manager and thinks that she is cheating on him. Heartbroken, he returns home. After Parthavi returns home, they argue severely; Madhu slaps Parthavi in the heat of the moment. Parthavi begins to doubt why she fled with Madhu. Parthavi is briefly missing, but Madhu finds her in her office, and realizes how much he loves her. He asks for her hand in marriage and they marry.

Soon, Parthavi becomes pregnant and they have a son, Aditya "Adi" Bhagla. During the puja for their new house, Parthavi's brother and his gang arrive with many gifts for her family, hinting at reconciliation. However, Madhu is not convinced and asks Parthavi to stay back, but she brushes it off in excitement. Parthavi leaves her son at home with Madhu and steps out to buy some sweets. As she is walking towards her house, Madhu and Aditya are thrown from the balcony abruptly, with her brother overlooking them. Parthavi cries in shock, as both her husband and son bleed profusely to death.

• Ishaan Khatter as Madhukar Bhagla
• Janhvi Kapoor as Parthavi Singh
• Ashutosh Rana as Ratan Singh, Parthavi's father
• Ankit Bisht as Gokul, Madhukar's friend
• Shridhar Watsar as Purshottam, Madhukar's friend
• Kshitij Kumar as Niranjan
• Aishwarya Narkar as Madhukar's mother
• Aditya Kumar as Devi Lal
• Kharaj Mukherjee as Sachin Bhowmick (Sachin Dada)
• Mustaqeem as Bijnori
• Godaan Kumar as Roop
• Shalini Kapoor as Parthavi’s mother
• Vishwanath Chatterjee as Inspector Shekhwat
• Hempushpak Arora as Principal Sir
• Jahnavi Dave as Anuradha
• Ishika Gagneja as Ambika
• Balaji Gauri as Sulekha Goenka
• Manish Singh Verma as Arvind Mama

Development

In November 2016, producer Karan Johar acquired the Hindi remake rights of the Marathi language film Sairat (2016), after the film's unexpected commercial success. On 15 November 2017, Johar announced through his Twitter handle that a film featuring Ishaan Khatter and Jahnvi Kapoor in lead roles was under production, and released three first look posters to commemorate the event. On the following day, he released another poster and revealed that the film was tentatively titled Dhadak and was an official remake of Sairat. The film marks the debut of Jahnvi Kapoor, daughter of Sridevi and Boney Kapoor. Dhadak was meant to be Khatter's debut film too, but he was then cast by Majid Majidi in Beyond the Clouds (2018).

Kapoor, who had watched Sairat for the first time with her mother Sridevi, expressed that she wanted to debut with a similar film. A few days later, Johar approached her on her mother's insistence with the role of the female lead in the Hindi remake of Sairat. Khatter watched Sairat after he was approached for the role, during which he learned that Shashank Khaitan was adapting it into a Hindi film. Kapoor elaborated and wrote the backstory of her character so that the role felt "more real" to her. Since Dhadak was set in Udaipur unlike Sairat, Khaitan took Kapoor and Khatter to Rajasthan and allowed them to spend time with the local people and eat the local food to make them understand the background, language and background of their characters.

Khaitan preferred to call Dhadak an adaptation rather than a remake of Sairat since he had made some changes to the storyline of the original film. Khaitan has credited how "Nagraj Manjule chose to tell that story and the uniqueness he brought to the film" as his inspiration for the remake. Khaitan, a Marwari Rajasthani who grew up in Kolkata, set Rajasthan and Kolkata as the premise for the film, and that required deviating from the original to stay "true to and the story telling. Another reason for choosing the two cities was "that they are visually and linguistically so different from each other". Khaitan called Dhadak a tribute to Sairat.

After he was sure that he wanted to make Dhadak, Khaitan worked to distance himself from Sairat, making Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017) in the meantime. He began writing Dhadak using those sequences which he instinctively recalled from Sairat, and eliminated those didn't come to him immediately. After writing the script, about four to five months before filming, Khaitan told Khatter and Kapoor their characters' behaviour, speech, and their inter-personal relationships. Khaitan didn't treat Khatter or Kapoor as "star kids" since he wanted to create a "good film" with newcomers. Johar had told Khaitan that the film "could be the biggest decision in life, or the biggest mistake in life". Khaitan preferred to make a high quality film over a commercial viable one.

Filming

Principal photography commenced on 1 December 2017 in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Kapoor was joined by her mother on the first day of filming. Shortly after filming began, the shoot was disrupted in Jaipur, Rajasthan, after a part of the Ambikeshwar Mahadev Temple was damaged by the film's unit. While scenes were being filmed at the Jagat Shiromani Temple and Panna Meena Ka Kund, the crew members had parked their vehicles near Ambikeshwar Temple. One of their vans hit the chhajja of the temple. A police case was lodged against the film unit head by the temple authorities for damaging their historic property.

During the Jaipur schedule of filming, two sequences were filmed by onlookers and circulated on Instagram. By contacting the Instagram Help Centre, the makers managed to remove one of the videos, but the other kept circulating on social media. This disrupted the filmmakers' plans to keep the character looks hidden. After the incident, the a no-phone policy was practiced on the sets of Dhadak, in which mobile phones and cameras were banned from being carried even by members of the cast and crew. The team urged the public to not indulge in such activities and to cooperate with them.

In January 2018, the visuals for the song "Zingaat" was filmed. It was choreographed by Farah Khan. In the same month, the Kolkata schedule of principal photography began. For a solo dance number picturised on Kapoor choreographed by Tushar Kalia, Kapoor rehearsed continously for two days, and then shot it over a 24 hour period in a studio in Mumbai. After Sridevi's unexpected death, the film's team took a break to allow Kapoor to pay respects to her mother. She returned to filming shortly after.^[18] In March 2018, shooting shifted to Kolkata; some of the sequences were filmed at Victoria Memorial.^[19] Filming was completed by mid-April 2018.^[20]