Hiren Kotwani (BOMBAY TIMES; March 16, 2014)

A year after Rajat Rawail announced that he had plans to remake Kaalia (1981), the project has been shelved. Industry sources attribute it to the debacle of the Zanjeer remake last year. A producer-distributor tells us that the failure of Zanjeer, starring Ram Charan, Priyanka Chopra, Sanjay Dutt and Prakash Raj, has made people wary of remaking Amitabh Bachchan’s hits from the 1970s, 80s and 90s. “Most of Amitji’s ‘angry young man’ films were in keeping with the socio-economic situation prevalent then. And, one can’t just pick up a Big B hit and remake it. Such a move is very risky,” says the source.

 Rajat says, “Any remake of an Amitabh Bachchan film has to be justified by the actor, the script and its execution, like how Hrithik Roshan justified Agneepath (2012). After working on the script for a year, I couldn’t crack it to meet the benchmark of Amitji’s Kaalia. Considering the ground reality, I decided to drop the idea.”