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Entertainment Punjabi
cinema has rarely ever had it so good. The year 2012 has seen films made in the state cross new milestones at the boxoffice. Two titles released within a month of each other — Jatt and Juliet and Carry on Jatta — smashed all records and raked in big bucks. The movie industry grapevine has it that music composer, singer and actor Himesh Reshammiya, who has bought the rights to Jatt and Juliet, has already composed half a dozen songs for the proposed Hindi remake and is looking for a top-draw Bollywood actor to play the make lead. In the Punjabi original, directed by Anurag Singh of Dil Bole Hadippa fame, Diljit Dosanjh essayed the principal male role. What’s more, the producers of Jatt and Juliet have firmed up plans for a sequel to the film. It will be only the second Punjabi film after Yaaran Naal Baharaan to have a numerical suffix attached to it.
Yaraan Naal Baharaan 2, directed by Samit Brar with Rajwinder Sumal and debutante Rishita Monga in the lead, hit the theatres a week before Carry on Jatta and made a strong commercial impact. Carry on Jatta, on its part, took the second biggest-opening ever in the annals of Punjabi cinema. It is indeed time to say carry on because regional films as a whole have been scaling unprecedented heights nationwide, none more so that S.S. Rajamouli’s Telugu-language Eega, the story of fly that wreaks violent vengeance on a well-heeled villain. The ambitious film, which combines live action with stunningly executed computer graphics, has been widely applauded for its first-rate special effects. It has already had three other versions — Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi (titled Makkhi, it opened on October 12) - out in the market. And now, two more versions, Japanese and Swahili, are reportedly in the pipeline. Sequels and remakes The fact that regional films, once necessarily confined to limited linguistic markets, and therefore, hamstrung by small budgets and moderate returns, have got into sequels and remakes mode is a sure sign that they are no longer poor country cousins of big-budget Hindi movies. While remaining confined within their own space in terms of narrative substance, these films are attracting huge attention across the nation. Be it Tamil movies or Bengali cinema, sequels have become the norm these days for big-budget productions. Billa 2, a prequel to 2007 Tamil gangster thriller directed by Chakri Toleti, opened recently in theatres amid great excitement. The critical responses were mixed, but the film’s boxoffice showing was strong. A 3D sequel to Mugamoodi, an action-packed Tamil superhero film that released earlier this year, is currently in the works. This tale of a martial arts specialist will be helmed by Mysskin, the director of the original hit, with Jiiva playing the role of the eponymous crime-buster. Pretty much the same seems to be happening in the sphere of commercial Bengali films. The number one male actor in the industry, Dev, has two sequels — Paglu 2 and Challenge 2 — in his kitty. And it isn’t just mainstream action flicks that are spawning follow-ups. It has been reported that a sequel to Bong Connection, an offbeat 2006 musical about Bengali NRIs struggling to sustain their links with their roots, is being developed. However, the director of the original film, Anjan Dutt, is not involved in any capacity with Bong Connection 2. Boxoffice hits The growing clout of regional cinema is probably best illustrated by Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni’s outstanding Marathi film, Deool (The Temple). Not only did it win the National Award for the Best Indian film of the year, it also pulled in the crowds when it opened in Maharashtra on the very day that the highly anticipated Ra.One, produced by and starring Shah Rukh Khan, was released. Deool, starring the National Award-winning actor Girish Kulkarni, alongside Nana Patekar, Sonali Kulkarni and Dilip Prabhawalkar, held its own at the boxoffice. The film earned Rs 2.5 crore in its opening week, a record for an independent Marathi film. Similarly, Kaksparsh, a Marathi film directed by Mahesh Manjrekar, has generated great enthusiasm among both critics and lay moviegoers. The period drama about a young widow’s fight for dignity in a conservative Brahmin family set in the years before and immediately after India’s independence in a small Konkan village has aroused the instant interest of the Mumbai movie industry. An enthused Manjrekar is planning a remake of Kaksparsh with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role, replacing Sachin Khedekar, whose performance in the Marathi original as a reform-minded elder brother-in-law has been widely lauded. With sequels, remakes and superhits becoming the norm, Indian regional movies are no longer all that regional. Their horizons are increasingly transcending linguistic boundaries: a happy augury for Indian cinema as a whole.
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Such is the kind of success that Jatt and Juliet has tasted — it now holds the distinction of being the biggest-ever blockbuster in the history of Punjabi cinema — that a Hindi remake of the film is on the anvil. Never before has a Punjabi film been picked up for a pan-Indian makeover in Mumbai.
