Did you know that the ‘official’ remake of Telugu thriller Kshanam was Baaghi 2? You can’t be blamed for thinking otherwise as the Hindi version of Kshanam is so far removed from the original that one wonders why producer Sajid Nadiadwala bothered to even buy the remake rights in the first place.
However, to be fair to Nadiadwala, even before the shooting of Baaghi 2 had started, he had said, “We are just taking the core of the plot and turning it around completely. It won’t be Kshanam when we finish with it.”
True to his word, Baaghi 2 is as different from Kshanam as Madhuri Dixit from Jacqueline Fernandez, give or take the Ek do teen number. Revisionist versions of original works are permissible, and even welcome. Like how Sudhir Mishra transformed Saratchandra Chatterjee’s Devdas to an unrecognisable beast in the forthcoming Daas Dev. Or Bornila Chatterjee’s excellent film The Hunger, where you will find it hard to find Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus in it.
But these are revisionist versions of acknowledged classics. What Baaghi 2 does to Kshanam is sheer plunder. The remake goes at the original with hammer and tongs, reducing the raging drama of Kshanam to a high-decibel desi tadka-boosted take on Pierre Morrel’s Taken. But Adivi Sesh, who wrote Kshanam and starred in it, plays it safe, starting with claims that he hasn’t seen Baaghi 2.
Like it or not, Adivi will have to make his peace with the remake. One of Telugu cinema’s rising stars, he apparently cut a business deal with Nadiadwala, where the latter was given Hindi remake rights for Kshanam, in return for the Telugu remake rights of Nadiadwala’s production 2 States, a film about a South –North marital alliance.
Alia Bhatt and Arjun Kapoor from 2 States
Says Adivi gleefully, “Kshanam got adapted for Hindi and now 2 States is being adapted in Telugu. It's serendipitous. Sajid Saab has given us the rights for the official remake of 2 States in Telugu. Shooting kicks off on April 5 and we hope to do a good job of it.”
But there’s no serendipity at play here! The entire plan was to exchange the remake rights between Sajid Nadiadwala and Adivi Sesh. And as per the deal, while Nadiadwala got to do what he liked with Kshanam, Adivi Sesh can exercise his own free will on 2 States.
One hears that the Telugu remake, featuring Adivi Sesh and Shivani Rajashekhar, will be radically different from the Hindi original. The love story is no more a Punjabi-Tamil alliance, but one involving protagonists from different states, most likely Telugu and Bengali. The remake thus, will in all probability, be far removed from the original.
The question is, are we now entering a new phase in the history of remakes where the original would find it difficult to recognise its own remake?
