Scripted to take off

Bollywood trends

When you do a remake, there’s a lot of pressure because people always love the original’ said Indiana Evans. True that! Remakes or inspiration-based movies are a current trend in the film industry but this formula sometimes fails to impress. Take for instance, the recently released Salman Khan-starrer ‘Tubelight’ which has triggered posts and tweets about how it is inspired from the Hollywood movie ‘Little Boy’.

Despite the backlash, members of the film industry feel that there are a lot of dynamics involved in filmmaking, which make remakes attractive. Kavitha Lankesh, Kannada film director, says, “The filmmaker might get inspired by a film he or she watched and feel that it is worth remaking. Remakes are a safe bet. This could be because the filmmakers are not sure about  how a fresh script would fare at the box office.”

She observes that since the culture in our country differs every 200 km, adapting movies is serious business. “What disturbs me is that the locale is often not done well. A  Kannada film looks similar to  a Tamil film. Thus, the story becomes pan-India, which is not good,” she adds.

Every film is consciously or subconsciously inspired from a concept, feels actor and director Rakshit Shetty, who believes that the remake trend has reduced with the onset of  experimental cinema.

“The 80s and 90s saw a lot of movies being copied but now filmmakers are more worried about the legal side. We still have many movies which are based or inspired from foreign movies but this could be due to many reasons,” he says.

Rakshit feels that filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap stand out for their original stories though. “A big star might like a film he sees and ask a director to make a similar one. Due to time constraints or other technical limitations, the film might have to hit the floors soon. This limits originality and the filmmakers end up aping whatever worked in the original film,” adds Rakshit.

Youngsters like Uthkarsha Balram, a filmmaking student, points out that not just Hollywood but even Spanish and  French movies that are being remade.

“But two filmmakers could have the same ideas. Movies here are presented with some  ‘Indian masala’ and songs,” she says. From ‘Satte Pe Satta’ and ‘Baazigar’ to ‘Sarkar’ and ‘Koi Mil Gaya’, remakes have existed for ages, she points out.

“The filmmaker might have wanted to give an Indian twist to the story and thus came the remake,” she says.

Still not all adaptations click with the audience, points out BCA student Ajith Kumar, who has worked on varied short films.

“The movie ‘Untraceable’ was remade into a Tamil movie ‘Inayathalam’ which didn’t work well with audience. The audience is accepting yet much more informed. They know what is a copy and what is not,” he details. “The flip side is that in a rat race where everyone is behind money, new concepts are sometimes a big risk to take,” he says.