It doesn’t seem like too long but Shah Rukh has just completed 23 years in the film industry.
The beginning was when Deewana, in which he had a side role to Rishi Kapoor, hit the screens. The movie went on to be a superhit but no one really thought that they were seeing the next superstar.
In fact, given his looks, most people in the industry didn’t even give him much of a chance at stardom. A comment from a filmmaker when he went to seek roles was that he had too much hair!
But there was only one man who was certain that he was destined for great things and that was Shah Rukh himself. His self-confidence has always been supreme and it was coupled with a relentless energy. Even when a nobody, he could make friends with the influential people of Bollywood.
And there was talent to back it up. It is in fact quite a paradox that he deliberately chose roles that were negative in character at the start and still created a fan following. And then he just as easily changed into a romantic hero and created an even bigger fan following.
You could understand Salman Khan and Aamir Khan becoming superstars because they came from illustrious Bollywood families, but Shah Rukh alone among the three built it all up from scratch.
He was ambitious and committed to retain his position, like all super successful men are. He has said in the past that the only time he felt insecure was when Hrithik Roshan first burst upon the scene, but it was not a challenge that lasted.
How will the Shah Rukh story pan out? He will be 50 in November and things can only go down from here. But as he tweeted a day before his 23rd anniversary in Bollywood, ‘It’s not necessary to be going somewhere to have a great ride….’


Filling the vacuum


So Aamir Khan will have no release this year because the movie he is doing, Dangal, will take two years to make. But if he were to have a release then it would be towards the end of December, timed to the Christmas-New Year break. No other filmmaker really wants to compete with an Aamir Khan movie and they usually stay off December.
But this year is going to be different because with no Aamir movie in the offing, that period is open for the taking. There are therefore a number of filmmakers vying for a release in December. There is Sanjay Leela Bhansali whose opus, Bajirao Mastani, will come out then. It is an ambitious project involving Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone, both of whom have toiled hard on the project agreeing to many of Bhansali’s extreme demands like lengthy blocking of dates.
But then there is also the problem of plenty and Bhansali might become a victim of that. Because another superstar has just set his eyes on a December release and that is Shah Rukh Khan. His Dilwale, it now seems, will release then.
For Bhansali this is not good news. Shah Rukh will bring his enormous marketing pull and inevitably all the cinema screens will be overwhelmingly monopolised by him.
This had happened to Ajay Devgn when his Son of Sardaar had clashed at the same time with Jab Tak Hain Jaan and Ajay had even taken to legal recourse citing unfair monopolistic practices. For some reason Shah Rukh seems to be unusually keen on testing his star power against others. Because there is another rumour that he will release another movie of his, Raees, during the Eid period next year and that is when the big Salman Khan movie also comes out.


Dancing with joy


The stars continue to smile brightly for Varun Dhawan. After a great performance as a tortured soul in Badlapur, he chose to do a mindless dance flick which wouldn’t tax his emotions and even this movie seems to be making the box office sing.
ABCD 2 has gone on to become a big hit. It is quite a feat for Remo D’Souza, the choreographer, who first made ABCD — it stands for Anybody Can Dance — and now ABCD 2.
They are in the genre of Hollywood movies like Step Up and he might just have pioneered a new trend in Bollywood. ABCD had no stars except Prabhudeva and still did well. ABCD 2 had Varun and Shraddha Kapoor and that is one reason why this edition has done even better.
For both the young stars of ABCD 2, everything they touch seems to be working. But to be fair to them, both have tested other experimental roles too. Varun with a film like Badlapur and Shraddha with Haider.  
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Remake disorder


Sunny Deol has practically disappeared from Bollywood, except to make a stray occasional appearance in movies in which the entire Dharmendra clan comes together.
But we will see him again soon and it could evoke a memory or two of his days of glory. Sunny has just finished shooting the sequel of Ghayal, a movie that he is still remembered for in which he played an angry young man out to take revenge against powerful people who had harmed his family.  So will the sequel be able to replicate the magic? Chances are not. Because Sunny is not really a young man anymore. He is 58 years old and that is an age when serious comebacks are just not possible. Even Amitabh Bachchan couldn’t manage it.
Sunny might have a chance if the movie is incredibly good with a superb plot and great direction. But there is no evidence that might happen. Going by his recent movies, it seems highly unlikely. Also other than an older generation, most of the youth won’t remember Ghayal at all.
A quarter century is a long time to make a sequel. Take Agneepath, another iconic movie, which was also released in the same year as Ghayal. That is a movie that was remade with Hrithik Roshan. Maybe, remaking Ghayal would have been a better idea but then Sunny wouldn’t have been able to be in it!

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