Young Hindi film stars had mixed luck with remakes

Spread over nearly a year, this column has examined the fate of remakes from two major film industries – Tamil and Telugu – based out of Chennai and Hyderabad respectively. As expected, a closer look at how these films fared across the Vindhyas revealed a mixed picture. Big and successful directors in both the southern movie industries have had fluctuating fortunes staring at them as they went about reprising their originally appreciated films in an alien language and milieu, where the common link was entertainment.

Despite positioning the latest teenyboppers or familiar faces who could draw in a decent initial audience into the cinema halls, many Hindi remakes have slipped through the cracks and gone unnoticed. From our list of nearly 50 films, there are at least 15 such ventures which met with that fate.

In this column, we take up five of them which were successful films in Tamil when released between 2003-2014. In fact, one of them 'Pizza', directed by debutante Karthik Subbaraj and released in 2012 gave a great booster shot to the former and the film's protagonist Vijay Sethupathy, a leading name in Indian cinema today. Sadly, the film directed by another debutante (retaining the same title in Hindi) Akshay Akkineni starring Akshay Oberoi and Parvathy Omanakuttan did not create the same impact which was experienced by the Tamil film patrons.

The other four, in the order of their year of releases – Nala Damayanthi (2003) starring Madhavan and Geethu Mohandas remade as 'Ram ji London Waley' two years later with the same hero, then popular multi-lingually bit the dust. An erotic thriller ' Thiruttu Payale' (2006) which gave a lift to a newcomer like Jeevan in Tamil for its sizzling scenes and a watchable plotline, failed to ignite passions in Hindi despite having a new hero Neil Nitin Mukesh when it was released as ' Shortcut Romeo' in 2016.

A pastoral story with a tale of friendship and betrayal could have worked anywhere in India, which has a mixed audience of urban and rural film viewers. Moreover, the director was the legendary Priyadarshan who was an established helmsman in Indian cinema. Yet, the 2009 hit ' Naadodigal' when remade from Tamil, did not appeal, in spite of the raw narration it carried over from the original.

A blend of a tale which had romance and spooky ghost scenes directed by another top shot director Mysskin – Pisaasu – released in 2014 was Hindiised four years later with Abhay Deol playing the protagonist in ' Nanu ki Jaanu'. A fairly gripping story was somehow lost in translation and soon enough, the film was seen adding to the list of unsuccessful productions which miss the bull's eye for both known and unknown reasons.