Samantha had a great debut film, its remake was no great shakes

The 2010 film 'Ye Maaya Chesave' is a notable film in a few ways. Originally, it was only a Tamil film which was being shot with Simbu and Trisha in the lead. With Manjula Ghattamaneni, the producer of the Telugu film asking Gautham Menon to shoot a Telugu version simultaneously (the Tamil film had already begun shooting), the over-the-border version too started taking shape with Naga Chaithanya and Samantha Ruth Prabhu, both of them in their early '20s. One is not too sure, a decade later, whether the love affair too started at the same time. Yet, the two versions had their lead stars playing guest roles in each other's film and not very surprisingly, had two different climaxes.

Shot on a shoestring budget by today's standards ( less than Rs 10 crore), the film was a massive hit in both the languages as it was backed up by some interesting storytelling and importantly, a great musical score by A R Rahman. The songs are a rage even today, a decade later, with the ' Mozart of Madras' winning his first Film Fare Award in Telugu for it.

The Hindi version, released in 2012, was titled ' Ekk Deewana Tha' with its screenplay by Javed Akhtar and the songs reused by Rahman. The direction was handled by Gautham Menon himself who cast Prateik Babbar and Amy Jackson as the principal characters. Two types of climax were shot and selectively exhibited across the country, for varied audiences in over 500 screens. This was to check the audience feedback on what kind of ending it desired – a coming-of-age love story or the usual, happy ending one.

Despite such bold moves and the songs gaining popularity, the film didn't work as expected as it failed to establish a connect with the Hindi-speaking audiences. The usual ' lost in translation' reason was bandied about but other than this, the reviewers did not give it a great rating as it failed to 'make them feel romantic'. Hence, it did not do much for the Hindi stars as Prateik is still to find his bearings in Hindi cinema while Amy Jackson had quite a few Tamil film releases, one with Rajinikanth too in Shankar's 2.0. This remake too thus failed to hit the bull's eye.