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 loosely adapted from 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 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 exercise-bicycle/washing-machine; Mohammad Idris, a barber from 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. This film was remade in Tamil as Nanban (2012) 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.