Dev, Jeet not ready to ditch remakes?

They are our biggest heroes, our superstars, the inheritors to the Uttam-Soumitra legacy. But why can���t Dev and Jeet look beyond sundry remakes year after year?
The question is screaming for an answer now. For, the first quarter of 2016 has been thanda and almost all films, including Jeet���s Power, have failed to work magic at the box office. In interview after interview, producers, directors and actors shake their heads and speak sagely of original content, but when it came to picking new projects, both Dev and Jeet chose ��� you guessed right ��� remakes! While Jeet is shooting for Baba Yadav���s Badsha, a remake of the Telugu action comedy Don Seenu (2010) starring Ravi Teja and Shriya Saran, Dev is on board Raja Chanda���s next, which is ���inspired��� from Salman Khan-starrer hit movie, No Entry (2005).
Why remakes? It can���t be insecurity about their positions, since both have given umpteen hits over the years. It can���t be remuneration, since both of them have long passed into the league where they can dictate terms. In fact, as the biggest heroes, they ��� along with their favourite producers ��� should be pushing the envelope in terms of content. But that has never been the case.
In explanation, Raj Chakrabarty, who has to his credit several hits including many remakes, says the dearth of screenplay writers is forcing Tollywood to look southwards. ���There is a huge market for commercial cinema. Who wouldn���t love to make an original commercial movie like Bajrangi Bhaijaan in Bengali? For that we need good writers. I, as a director, am challenged when it comes to writing; I can ideate. So, making remakes is not a bad thing, provided the stories are adapted in Bengal���s context,��� he says.
Raj has hundreds of scripts lying in his office, he says, but most aren���t to his liking. ���Also, unlike in Mumbai where there are good teams working on a film, here an individual often does everything from writing the screenplay, penning the dialogues and then directing a film. That���s very difficult. There are several problems plaguing commercial cinema at the moment. To make films work, they need to be released in at least a 100 theatres. We first need that infrastructure to take things forward,��� adds Raj.
Producers have their logic to defend remakes as well. Ashok Dhanuka, who is helming the production of Badsha, said he has never asked his directors to copy an original frame by frame. ���I have made Bengali films from Punjabi and Gujarati originals, among others, but these aren���t ditto copies. If no one gives me a good story here, I can always take a film from another industry and base it in Bengal. The story can remain the same, but it has to suit the Bengali sensibility. My Bikram Singha did not work, but the same film (Vikramarkudu) when made in Hindi as Rowdy Rathore, was a big hit,��� he said.
However much producers might want to defend the strategy, the stories from the sets of remakes are hilarious. A star���s friend recounts his visit to the sets of a remake film a few years back, where he found the director sitting next to the monitor, busy with a laptop which had the original south film playing. He was watching the film and copying each shot frame by frame!
If in this ���creative��� process, originality goes for a toss, who cares? Scriptwriter Padmanabha Dasgupta says he has turned down several offers to ���adapt��� south films, but feels it���s a Catch-22 situation. ���Promising young talents are shying away from writing as they fear rejection. They want to write only after getting a go-ahead from a production house, which will fetch them a good remuneration. For production houses, it���s difficult to bring on board young writers who are yet to prove their mettle. Also, most good writers are busy with television projects, where the pressure of megaserials does not allow them to write for films,��� he said.
Ironically, both Dev and Jeet���s remakes are likely to release on Eid and will face competition from Salman Khan-starrer Sultan and Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Raees ��� original big-budget Bollywood movies. The verdict on original vs remakes will be out in months to come.