A couple of days back we reported the veteran filmmaker Shekhar Kapur is not happy with Mr. India 2. He even took his Twitter handle to lash out at the makers.
Now lyricist-writer Javed Akhtar has come on board to defend the makers. He says Shekhar Kapur should not be offended for not being consulted about the new version of Mr India as he, too, had disregarded the original script for the previous film.
The film which featured Anil Kapoor, Sridevi and Amrish Puri in lead roles was originally written by Salim-Javed.
In an interview, Javed said, “Today Shekhar Kapur is offended because no one has consulted him about this new project. Why should they? They may or may not be morally bound to inform the people involved with the original film, but they are not legally bound to do so. And where was his sense of creative outrage when he had disregarded the bound script of Mr India that we had given to producer Boney Kapoor and Shekhar?”
“Shekhar chose to do his own thing back then. Today, when other people are doing the same, he is upset?” he added.
Filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar public the news that he is making a trilogy based on the classic film, Mr India, in collaboration with the production company Zee Studios.
A daily talked to Shekhar and asked where the maker should have asked for his permission, “Not if it’s a different film or a remake. But if they are picking the same/similar characters, then they definitely should have. A director has moral rights over his/her creation, especially in a film like Mr India.”
Talking about the original script he said, “I never read that script. I am a hundred percent sure that what we made finally was very different from what Salim-Javed had written originally. I never saw that original Salim-Javed script, which I believe had been conceived for Mr Amitabh Bachchan. As for what you saw on screen in Mr India, the scenes were written as we were filming. There was a constant improvisation on the sets. Do you know, Mogambo was written after we started shooting? We knew there was going to be a goofy villain who’d have to go beyond Daga and Teja, but we didn’t know who or what it would be. Javed Akhtar was struggling to create a new kind of villain. Mogambo was born as we were filming, just like idea of Sridevi going into the villain’s den dressed as Charlie Chaplin.”
Talking about the recreation of the characters of the film Javed said, “That’s not so impossible. Every James Bond film has its own heroine and villain. As I said, it all depends on what they do with the character.”
