Shah Rukh Gets Adventurous

Shah Rukh Gets Adventurous • Not Easy to Topple Sajid Khan • No Performance Bonus

There might be some good news in store for everyone who has been criticising Shah Rukh Khan’s reluctance to venture too far from his comfort zone as far as his film choices go. Despite having delivered credible performances in such films as Swades and Chak De India, he has preferred to work in mostly romantic films and large-scale entertainers that have built-in audiences and virtually guaranteed bank-breaking box-office returns.

But now it appears that the actor has said yes to a ‘relatively serious’ film to be helmed by Parzania director Rahul Dholakia that SRK’s friends at Excel Entertainment, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, will produce. Details on the project are still sketchy, but according to those in the know, the story is set in Gujarat, whose outdated liquor prohibition policy has famously resulted in large-scale alcohol smuggling across the state. Shah Rukh is likely to play a small-time bootlegger who subsequently becomes a liquor baron.

The film is slated to go into production after Shah Rukh wraps up initial schedules of Happy New Year, and there are plans to announce the project shortly before the release of Chennai Express on 8 August. Insiders say the producers are planning a launch campaign with SRK sporting the look of the character that he will play in the film.

For many of us, the memory of Sajid Khan’s spectacularly underwhelming Himmatwala remake is still fresh—it has only been three months since it released—but the filmmaker himself appears to have moved on, with few scratches to show for it.

Earlier this week, Fox Star Studios announced a joint production with Vashu Bhagnani’s Pooja Films on what they have declared will be ‘the biggest comedy entertainer of 2014’. The film, to be directed by Sajid Khan and titled Humshakals, will star Saif Ali Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh and TV heavyweight (pun unintended) Ram Kapoor, each in triple roles.

Reportedly, this is the same Angoor remake that Sajid has been working on for some months now, and over which he also clashed with Rohit Shetty some months ago. The Chennai Express director had apparently acquired the official remake rights to Angoor and was in no mood to let Sajid make his own ‘unofficial’ version.

Despite speculation that Saif was likely to ditch the project in the wake of the Himmatwala debacle, the Go Goa Gone star has remained committed to the film. However, insiders say that he is being ‘very well compensated’ for his involvement in the project.

Sajid had lesser luck with Amitabh Bachchan, who reportedly pulled out of the film stating the usual date problems. Bachchan was hotly pursued for the film, with Sajid once even flying into Bhopal and showing up on the sets of Prakash Jha’s Satyagraha to narrate the film to the actor. TV star Ram Kapoor of Bade Achche Lagte Hain fame has taken on the role Sajid had written for Bachchan.

There are murmurs that the director of a recent blockbuster film is feeling slighted since he wasn’t “suitably compensated” for the project. Signed to helm the film for an agreed (reasonable) sum, rumour mongers are saying that the director hoped to see a fancy bonus come his way when the film broke box-office records, but was left wanting by his mentor-producer. The director also allegedly visited another ‘blockbuster filmmaker’ known for blowing up cars in his movies, to understand the intricacies of Bollywood numbers and box-office business, and also for advice on what salary he ought to quote for subsequent film projects.

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Rajeev Masand

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