Remakes are a “challenging” task, says Mary Kom director Omung Kumar. “Remakes are challenging, because you have to make the same movie again, and then you have to put in your touch and efforts to make it better. Plus there is a lot of tension because earlier remakes have been hit[s], so automatically yours expected to be hit too,” he said at a special screening of Drishyam on Tuesday night.
“I haven’t seen any other remake or original yet, so thank god for that. Now I can watch the movie with fresh mind,” he said.
Among those present for the screening were Prachi Desai, Darshan Kumar, Shekhar Suman, Adhyayan Suman, Ken Ghosh, Ketan Mehta, Nishikant Kamat and David Dhawan.
“Drishyam is [a] remake of [a] Malayalam film by the same name, about a common man, Vijay Salgaonkar (Ajay Devgn), who will do anything to protect his family, but in a bizarre twist of events becomes a prime suspect in the kidnapping of the son of headstrong Inspector General of Police Meera Deshmukh (Tabu).
Ajay Devgn and Tabu have already collaborated for movies such as Takshak (1999), Haqeeqat (1995) and Vijaypath (1994). So ask what pulled the Indian National Award-winning director to this movie and Kumar is quick to reply: “Tabu”.
“I am a Tabu fan! But I love Ajay Devgn’s intensity,” he added.
After the hit Mary Kom, Omung Kumar has started work on Sarabjit, which is a biopic of Sarabjit Singh, who strayed into Pakistan and was caught and convicted of terrorism and spying by a Pakistani court.
Kumar first signed actor Randeep Hooda to play the lead role in the movie and later cast Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who will playing the role of Sarabjit’s sister Dalbir Kaur, from whose viewpoint the film is narrated.
“After my first biopic, I swore my next venture will not be a biopic. But when I read the script, I liked it so much; I had to retrieve my ‘Not doing biopic’ statement. I had to do Sarabjit,” he said.
