Another Mollywood superstar grosser fails to score in Hindi

Last week, we saw how one of the films of Malayalam's leading stars – Mammootty- failed to capture the interest of the upcountry audience when it was remade as 'Billu' with two major stars – Irrfan Khan essaying the title role and Shah Rukh Khan playing a cameo. This happened despite the same ambience being successfully exploited by the southern filmwalas while the transfer of theme from one corner of the country to the other resulted in ' transmission loss' of sorts in Hindi. This was of a film released in Kerala in 2007, remade in Hindi two years later.

This week, we have yet another star, Mohanlal, who is a screen rival to Mammotty and has equal, if not ferocious fan backing all across the world for his casual, understated acting style. His 2005 film – Udayananu Tharam - was a 'black comedy' of sorts and as Wikipedia describes it: Udayananu Tharam presents the Malayalam film industry through a satirical viewpoint. The financial and artistic crisis which plagued the once glittering Malayalam film industry at the turn of the 21st century lies at the centre of the story. It depicts the struggles of Udayabhanu (Mohanlal), who is an assistant director and who aspires to be a director. But he is thwarted in his attempts by a scheming friend and junior artist, Rajappan Thengamoodu (Sreenivasan), who steals his screenplay to become superstar Saroj Kumar.The film made the biggest ever opening until then in the history of Malayalam cinema.

With so many USPs in its favour, it made the rounds of fellow southern film industries and obviously, Hindi where it was remade four years later in 2009 as 'Short Kut'. It is largely considered to be an unofficial remake of the original Malayalam movie. It had a reasonably attractive star cast comprising Akshaye Khanna, Arshad Warsi and Amrita Rao with Anil Kapoor reprising himself in a special role. He was the producer of the film too under Anil Kapoor Films Company.

Music was scored by the terrific trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy who had by then completed nearly 40 films in a decade-plus career across many film industries in India. However, the film was considered a 'major disappointment'.

In southern film industry, it is a jinx which is largely believed by many that any film which takes an inward look at their own industry affairs is bound to fail. The theory being propounded is that people don't want to know the grime behind the glamour that the film folks like to highlight day in and day out and as long as the spotlight is on them. However, the Hindi version was panned for bad direction also, which led to its crashing at the BO.