Hiren Kotwani (BOMBAY TIMES; December 11, 2017)

Long before Rohit Shetty’s first collaboration with Shah Rukh Khan, Chennai Express (2013), the two were reportedly keen on remaking Gulzar’s cult comedy Angoor (1982) and had even acquired the rights for it. The idea of recreating the classic took a back seat again, when SRK and Rohit worked together on the action-romance Dilwale in 2015. Recently, when we met with the filmmaker, post the success of his last film Golmaal Returns, we asked him whether recreating Angoor with Shah Rukh Khan was still on his mind. He said, “If you give SRK (a film like) Angoor, he will make it into a watermelon! It’s a very sweet story. But when we try to make a simple film bigger, its essence and sweetness diminishes and it goes into another zone. I can go to a hill station, and make a film like Angoor in two months and come back. But I’m still wondering if I want to make a film on that scale or not.” His reasoning is not misplaced, because generally, when a filmmaker like Rohit teams up with an actor like SRK, the audience expects the film to be made on a mega canvas.

Talking about what inspires him to make films that are larger than life, Rohit said, “When we were kids, we looked up to filmmakers like Vijay Anand and Manmohan Desai. Later, when we worked as assistant directors, we were inspired by filmmakers like Mukul Anand. Back then, they didn’t have big budgets but even then they made grand films. Now we have the budgets and technical advantage, but strangely, fewer grand films. My schooling in movies comes from films of those days. So for me, cinema is 70mm, larger than life. When someone sees a film in theaters, it should be a big cinematic experience.”

Some time ago, there were also talks of Rohit remaking Ram Lakhan (1989), but that doesn’t seem to be on the cards either.