Friday, July 10, 2009
Mumbai rush for made-in-Chennai
Midway through the making ofKambakkht Ishq, an assistant gently told director Sabbir Khan that the plot resembled that of Tamil comedy Pammal K Sambandham starring Kamal Haasan.
Although Sabbir claimed that KI was an original idea, he didn’t want to take chances — the story line of a marriage-hating woman surgeon leaving her watch in the hero’s stomach during an operation was too similar to that of the 2002 Tamil film. So Sabbir bought the remake rights of Pammal from producer P.L. Thenappan.
Sabbir is not the only Bollywood director to be tapping Kollywood (as the Tamil film industry is known). A slew of Hindi filmmakers is rushing to buy the rights to some of the latest Tamil hits, in a throwback to the days when almost every Jeetendra film was a remake of either a Tamil or a Telugu hit.
Two of the biggest box-office successes of recent times -— Subramaniapuram andNadodigal — are to be remade in Hindi.
“It shows that a well-made movie with a good script (that is) close to reality can spark interest anywhere. So when Global Infotainment wanted to remake the two films, I happily gave them the rights,” said Sashikumar, producer of both the Tamil movies.
Sources said Shahid Kapoor and Dev Patel had been approached for the Hindi version of Nadodigal, which revolves around four friends.
“The biggest challenge for these two movies would be to retain the native flavour as the stories happened in small Tamil towns,” Tamil film historian “Film News” Anandan said.
“The Hindi filmmakers may safely fall back on the native flavour of a Punjabi village or town. Yash Chopra has proved that the Punjabi flavour has a pan-Indian, even a global, appeal.”
Boney Kapoor is remaking two hits from the house of Duet Movies — Mozhi andAbhiyum Naanum — the first about love between a deaf-mute girl and a musician and the second about a doting father refusing to let go of his daughter.
“The humour worked wonders for these movies, which is why the director is keen to zero in on the right person to pen the Hindi dialogues,” said actor Prakash Raj, who produced both the movies.
Perhaps the success of Ghajini, the remake of a Tamil film, started the rush. Both versions were directed by Murugadoss.
“Aamir Khan has been smart to retain Asin as heroine; her bubbly character was like sunshine in an otherwise dark tale of revenge. He also made appropriate changes to the script to make it more believable than the Tamil original and then let Murugadoss narrate the story,” film critic K. Sudhaangan said.
Two more Tamil films being remade in Hindi are June R — as Phir Tum Mil Gaye with Jaya Bachchan playing a neglected mother — and Bose, a love story between a dancer and an army officer.
Although neither made it big at the box office, their plots appear to have attracted the Hindi filmmakers.
The real feather in Kollywood’s cap, however, comes not from Bollywood but Hollywood. Weinstein Company, maker of Rambo and The Nutty Professor, has moved to buy the remake rights of Yaavarum Nalam, a horror flick made into a bilingual whose Hindi version was released as 13 B.
First Look: NTR's Adurs
NTR is back to work for his latest Telugu movie Adurs a few days after recuperating from the injuries he sustained in an accident on one of his election campaigns.The young actor, who started campaigning for Chandrababu Naidu's (images)Telugu Desam Party, is proving to be a chip off the old block -- rather like his late grandfather -- in terms of his mesmerising speeches till the accident cut short his campaigns.
Adurs is being produced by Vallabhaneni Vamsi Mohan (under Vaishnavi Arts Banner) and directed by VV Vinayak. Slated for summer, the film's release got postponed on account of NTR's injury. NTR and Vinayak share a good rapport as they have done Aadi and Samba together before.Nayantara (images) and Sheela give NTR company in Adurs and thereby revving up the glamour quotient of the film which is now scheduled for release on October 14.Devisriprasad composes music like he did for NTR's film Rakhee (helmed by Krishnavamsi).NTR is rumoured to be playing a double role (a brahmin and a don) in Adurs while Nayantara is rumoured to appear in a bikini.NTR's last film Kantri directed by Mehar Ramesh did average business at the BO, while Rakhee (the film before Kantri) rocked at the turnstiles. It's been a year since a NTR release so his fans must be waiting with bated breath for Adurs.
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