Selfiee, Shehzada, Cirkus: Bollywood's new remakes defeat the purpose of reimagining a story

The grammatically challenged spelling of Selfiee gives Akshay Kumar’s new film a freak twist of originality, for almost everything else about the film is a rehash of Prithviraj Sukumaran’s 2019 Malayalam hit, Driving Licence. Kumar, reeling under a spate of box office bombs in recent months, has this time opted to go where Bollywood habitually ventures in the desperate need of a hit — the remake zone.

The zone, however, hasn’t been a happy space for Bollywood in recent times. Selfiee opens a week after Kartik Aaryan’s remake misadventure Shehzada, which unsuccessfully tried recreating the magic of Allu Arjun’s Telugu hit, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo. Several other top stars in Bollywood have vainly taken the remake route lately. Cirkus starring Ranveer Singh fell back on William Shakespeare’s template of The Comedy Of Errors, already attempted twice in Bollywood as Angoor (1982) and Do Dooni Chaar (1968). Aamir Khan’s Laal Singh Chaddha tried Indianising the 1994 Hollywood hit Forrest Gump starring Tom Hanks. Thank God starring Ajay Devgn and Sidharth Malhotra took its plot from the 2009 Danish comedy, Sorte Kugler (titled What Goes Around in English). Hrithik Roshan’s Vikram Vedha, co-starring Saif Ali Khan, was a faithful Hindi retelling of Pushkar-Gayathri’s Tamil thriller of the same name that released in 2017. A quick look at Bollywood’s roster of the past year reveals there were several other forgettable attempts at remaking popular originals, including Bachchhan Paandey, Jersey, Nikamma, Hit: The First Case, Dobaara and Mili.

Official numbers are yet to come in at the time of writing, but unconfirmed pre-release predictions on Selfiee, going by advance booking trends, doing the rounds are shocking. Trade experts feared the film’s day one collections could be below, or around, Rs 10 crore, a figure that belies Akshay Kumar’s superstar tag. The fact, considered alongside the disastrous fate of Shehzada and all the recent Hindi remakes mentioned above, points at what fans seem to telling Hindi filmmakers: They don’t want remakes anymore. At a time when original content from the South — notably the Baahubali films, RRR, Kantara, Pushpa: The Rise Part 01 and the KGF franchise — has captured imagination of pan-India fans who watched the Hindi dubbed versions of these hits, Bollywood filmmakers need to focus on fresh entertainment that isn’t boring. The mighty 1,000 crore-plus box office kill of Pathaan would also underline the fact.

Bollywood’s tendency to remake probably finds roots in the its ages-old fetish for plagiarism, which served the industry well for decades. By the mid-2000s, however, things started becoming difficult for copycats among Hindi filmmakers because foreign production houses — particularly Hollywood studios — began to strictly monitor Bollywood content for copyright infringement. Filmmakers were then forced to buy copyright. While rehashing Indian originals, they also increasingly started roping in the writers and/or directors of the original films they set out to remake. However, barring cut the odd exceptions such as Drishyam 2, Hera Pheri, Bheja Fry or Kaante, Hindi remakes have rarely impressed fans in the recent decades. Most attempts to cash in on what worked once elsewhere failed to connect with Bollywood fans.

Most of the latest crop of remakes seem to render useless the entire purpose of reimagining a story, because these films are cut-paste jobs without any value addition. In many remakes that originated from southern hits, such as Hit: The First Case, Mili or Jersey, the Bollywood producers in question tried wooing success by retaining the same directors as the original hits. However, such efforts were lost in translation.

Bollywood’s reluctance to give up the idea of remakes is baffling because the advent of OTT has radically changed movie-viewing habits all over India. Every original film that spawns a Hindi remake is available online, especially regional hits. In most cases, the originals have been accessible for months before the Hindi remake arrives in theatres.

Importantly, the recent Shehzada fiasco shows how the streaming culture is not conducive to remaking films. Goldmines Telefilms, who own the rights of the Hindi version of Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo, decided to drop the film in its dubbed form on YouTube exactly two weeks before Shehzada released. It could be argued Goldmines showed a lack of professional solidarity, but the company had done nothing illegal. As it is, Ala Vaikunthapurramuloo was available for streaming in its original Telugu version with English subtitles since February 2020. The YouTube release of the dubbed Hindi version came as a sucker punch for the prospects of Shehzada. The ensuing loss in revenues for the Kartik Aaryan-starrer would have run into crores, according to trade estimates.

Bollywood remakes stood an easier chance of succeeding in the pre-OTT and pre-social media era, when the originals weren’t widely available to the Hindi audience. Although the multiplex boom of the early 2000s made it easy to watch original foreign content, a Bollywood copy as Murder could still become a hit despite viewers here having seen its Hollywood original, Unfaithful, thanks to the smart casting of Mallika Sherawat in a career-defining role. Similarly, Kaante would be widely applauded despite rehashing the plot of the Quentin Tarantino classic Reservoir Dogs because of the film’s multi-star cast toplined by Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Dutt, as well as director Sanjay Gupta’s idea to give each character an original back story that struck an emotional chord with the audience. Priyadarshan’s Hera Pheri, one of the best remakes Bollywood released in the new millennium, reimagined Siddique-Lal’s 1989 Malayalam hit, Ramji Rao Speaking. The Hindi remake was a moderate success upon release but it has emerged a cult flick over the years mainly because of the comic chemistry shared by its three leads, Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal and Suniel Shetty.

Historically, classic Hindi remakes have ranged from comedy (think Hrishikesh Mukherji’s Chupke Chupke, based on the Bangla hit Chhadmabeshi) to tragic drama (Asit Sen’s Mamta reimagined the Bangla hit Uttar Falguni). In 1957 Mehboob Khan released Mother India, one of the greatest Indian films made. The film was a remake of Khan’s 1940 release, Aurat. Most classic remakes that have stood the test of time did so because they weren’t cut-paste jobs. Mother India, for instance, took the core plot of a poor but upright woman’s struggles to raise her sons beyond its focus on the woman of substance, and rendered a symbolic spirit of nationalism to her tale.

Popular remakes in later decades have included Baazigar, which shot Shah Rukh Khan to superstardom as an antihero in 1993, before he’d find his romantic groove. The Abbas-Mustan revenge thriller was a remake of the 1991 Matt Dillon-starrer, A Kiss Before Dying. Around the same time, Aamir Khan scored as a rom-com hero reimagining Clarke Gable’s role from It Happened One Night in Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin (1991), and then doing a Cary Grant in Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke (1993), a copy of the 1958 hit Houseboat that had Juhi Chawla reprising Sophia Loren’s act. Both these rom-com hits, directed by Mahesh Bhatt, had many scenes and dialogues that were straightaway lifted from the originals but the films continue to resonate primarily for the contemporary touch one spots in characterisation, storytelling and acting. Then there have been instances where Bollywood remade its old hits — Don, Zanjeer, RGV Ki Aag (Sholay), Karzzz, Ittefaq, Agneepath, Himmatwala and Umrao Jaan come to mind. Of these, Don and Agneepath managed to find fan favour due to star power.

The fact is Bollywood’s list of remakes — official and plagiarised — is so huge one would need multiple volumes of books to discuss just the top picks. In a way, it proves why Hindi filmmakers need to give the overdone genre a rest.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who specialises in popular culture.

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