Disappointed at being left in dark about the Mr. India Reboot, the director Shekar Kapur of the 1987 cult hit tells mid-day that he is seeking legal recourse to protect his 'creative rights'
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; February 27, 2020)

Soon after mid-day broke the news that Ali Abbas Zafar will helm the reboot of Mr India (1987), there was a backlash from the makers of the original. Anil Kapoor's daughter Sonam K Ahuja even criticised the "underhanded" manner in which the remake was conceived of without the knowledge of the original film's leading man. Director Shekhar Kapur has now joined the chorus.

It is understandable that Kapur, the director of Bollywood's first sci-fi outing, is mighty displeased about the turn of events. When mid-day reached out to him, he said, "Where is the director's ownership on the material he has created? It [the reboot] is based on what I have created. Now, I am in touch with lawyers all over the world to [tackle] the issue. It's about creating a new understanding of creative authorship of the principal director of a film. [The model] is [followed] in many nations of the world, including Australia, and the US. As the director, I am the prime author of the movie. I must have rights to the future remake of the film created by me. This calls for a change in the constitutional copyright laws. This is not about Mr India anymore."

Knowing all too well that a movie's rights rest with the producer in India, the director points out, "The poster reads Surinder Kapoor's Mr India produced by Boney Kapoor. His father was the original producer."

Kapur informs that he had reached out to Boney as soon as the reboot to the Sridevi-starrer was announced. "[When I questioned him], he said nothing is set in stone. Anil was equally disturbed that he didn't know about it," he says, adding that Boney did not inform him about the alleged transfer of rights. Charting his next course of action, Kapur says, "It's time to have a serious legal discussion here to reinterpret the copyright act so that it accords authorship of a film to the principal director. This is not directed at Boney, or the current director, or Zee Studios. It is directed at the act itself."

Boney Kapoor declined to comment on the story.

Ahead of the release of her single next month, Shekhar Kapur's daughter Kaveri says music will always be the centre of her world; father calls her a 'genius'
Sonia Lulla (MID-DAY; January 21, 2019)

When Shekhar Kapur's musician-daughter approached him with a request to direct her upcoming video, the filmmaker recalls being disturbed. "She's 17, and I wanted to know where those words came from," says Kapur, of Kaveri's song Smell Of The Rain.

"She told me that it's about how most of the mistakes that people make are because they reject their dark side. I knew then that I'd have to take it seriously." Shekhar took inspiration from Kerela's Kathakali dance form, which, he says, represents demons too. "I wrote a story of a young girl who tries to run away from her dark side. She then accepts it, and finally becomes it."

In an Instagram video shared in the midst of shoot, Shekhar trains his camera on an evidently shy Kaveri as she learns the ropes of the dance. "I was comfortable this time, but, I've found it hard to face the camera. Yet, dad has always wanted me to act," she says.

Like every teenager, Suchitra Krishnamoorthi's daughter too harboured aspirations of dabbling in a variety of professions. "A geologist and an astronaut," she says. "An archaeologist," her father adds. Yet, music has held a special place in her heart since she was eight. Confessing to sharing many similarities with her father, she says, "I know dad must have faced the same things at my age that I do, including apprehensions about the future, confusion about who you are, and even heartbreak. I talk to him about it all the time."

A student of Hindustani classical music, Kaveri spent a summer learning at Berklee College Of Music. "I've also applied to music schools now. I believe that should complete my education."

Certain that his daughter would make for a promising actor, Shekhar doesn't think twice before pitting her against the likes of Cate Blanchett and Heath Ledger when stating, "Working with actors like them, I've noticed how they tell a story with their eyes. Kaveri has that ability. What scares me is when people like A R Rahman say she has a gift. She is a genius. It made me realise that I have a special responsibility to support her. I'm not as gifted in filmmaking as she is in music."

Ask him how his daughter differs from him and he says, "Look, at 17, I was only chasing girls."

Shekhar Kapur tells BT what a marvel Stan Lee was, and how knowing him has enriched his life
As told to Purba Dutt (BOMBAY TIMES; November 16, 2018)

I met Stan Lee several times, and that was because I had a comic books company and used to, and still, write comics. The original company was formed between Deepak Chopra, Richard Branson, Sharad Devarajan and myself. Every time I met Stan, we used to discuss stories and share ideas on superheroes. He was very keen to do things in China and India. He was convinced that ultimate mythology exists in these two countries, and Stan used to draw a lot on mythology to create his superheroes.

I showed him my film Mr. India, and after watching it, he said to me, ‘You’ve got it right, Shekhar! You created a superhero out of an ordinary man’. He used to always say that a superhero is formed out of an ordinary person, and when the superpowers are taken away from him, one must remember that he’s an ordinary person. I have my short take on this. Whenever writers approach me with stories on superheroes, my one question to them always is — what’s his kryptonite? What is it that makes him weak? What is it that can break him down? You cannot have a superhero without his kryptonite. That kryptonite is what can take away his power, and keep him ordinary. So, a superhero has to be someone who even when devastated by his kryptonite fights beyond his vulnerabilities. Stan and I used to have long discussions on this.

He wanted to create superheroes from other cultures. Stan was really, really, really ahead of his times. And he never stopped. Every time we met, we’d bounce ideas of each other, and he was forever asking, ‘What do you think of this idea? What do you say about a superhero like this? How about doing this?’ He was unstoppable. I once told him that the world was fast changing, and we needed to have superheroines like Wonder Woman, and he readily agreed. ‘Yes, Shekhar, yes, yes, we need superheroines.’ He said when he had started writing his comic books, his audience was mainly in America, but now every culture needed to have its own superheroes. I am now even more inspired to make a superhero movie. Superheroine, really. The only superhero movie coming out of India that has stood the test of time is Mr. India. It’s about time I made the next. The last time I met Stan was four years ago, and he told me about the stories he was working on. I believe he sold a few of those stories to China. We had talked of the possibility of creating an Indian superhero, and there’s already a lot of work that has been done on this. So, work on that continues, though right now I am totally taken in with the idea of launching India’s first superheroine, Devi, based on the character in my comic book with Graphic India.

I’d say that I am very inspired by Stan to make a superheroine film in India.

Director Shekhar Kapur on the kind of love he believes in ­ mysterious and indefinable
Deebashree Mohanty (TIMES LIFE; October 29, 2017)

Aastha Atray Banan (MID-DAY; May 29, 2016)

Shekhar Kapur has been haunted by the question, what is infinity, since he was 12. He would lie on his back, on the terrace of his Nizamuddin home in Delhi, and ponder about the Milky Way with his mother, Sheela. “I’d ask her where the sky extended to. And she’d say, to forever. I’d go to physics class the next day, and they’d tell me anything that can’t be measured doesn’t exist,” he smiles over the memory of contradictions when we meet at a Juhu café.

Most recently, the question led him to religious and spiritual gurus. He says he befriended new-age speaker Deepak Chopra and yogi Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. He also spent time with the Dalai Lama. He came closer to the answer when working on an installation called Water that now sits at Mumbai’s T2 international airport terminal. It allows visitors to interact with musical notes by running their fingers through a water fountain.

It’s while creating it that he met a scientist who had worked at a university run by the Amritanandamayi Trust which has at its centre, Amma, the 62- year-old hugging saint from Kerala who assuages people of their troubles with a squeeze. She spends more than 12 hours every day hugging thousands of followers, ridding them of woes when she presses their heads against her soft, rounded body always draped in white. Hospitals and educational institutions, spanning schools to engineering colleges, are run under the aegis of her trust. Like with all godmen and women, Amma too has been critiqued for amassing a fortune from misery.


It doesn’t vex Kapur. Instead, he harks back to 2013 when he was invited to film Amma’s 60th birthday celebrations in Kollam, Kerala. “She hugs for 17 hours a day. She travels six months of the year doing just that. She runs a multitude of universities, ashrams and hospitals, where the greatest minds from all over the world work. If you go up to one of them and ask, ‘who planned this? Who commissioned this?’, all answers lead to Amma,” he says. He remembers sitting behind her during a darshan when a staffer came and whispered something in her ear. She answered in Malayalam. “The guy told me, ‘We have a million dollars, and we needed to check with Amma what to do with it. She conveyed her decision. How does she do it? She is uneducated!” he says with wonderment about the woman born to a fisherman’s family in Parayakadavu, Kerala.

And so was born The Science Of Compassion, a 49-minute documentary on Amma, which he premiered online last week. Criticism targeted at her, he says he “doesn’t care for”. One of Amma’s most prominent followers, Gail Tredwell, released Holy Hell in 2014, highlighting the embezzlement of funds and rampant physical and sexual abuse at Amma’s ashram. “Even Buddha was accused of sexual abuse. People living in the rational world are always trying to bring down everything to the mundane. That’s the way we are,” Kapur says.

He clarifies though that he isn’t a follower. But he has fallen victim to her charm. “She is fascinating. There is this story I heard and a picture I saw of her licking the sores of a man suffering from leprosy when she was told she couldn’t hug him. Who does that?"

We ask him about something less tricky — Shakespeare.  The director has been busy working on a 10-episode series for TNT titled Will. It’s based on the early years of William Shakespeare’s life. The trailer depicts a 16th-century London that could also be your modern-day, loud, obnoxious nightclub.

Will is a poet who writes stories that excite the masses. An actor questions him in the trailer, “You can’t just make up words”, and Will says to that, “Someone has to!” “I realised TV is big. I mean half the world watches Game of Thrones. Will was written by Craig Pearce, a collaborator of Baz Luhrmann. That made it more exciting.”

And the project taught him a thing or two. He admits he hates ‘intellectuals’. “I was always told that to read Shakespeare, you needed to be one. But when I began reading the script, I realised he was a poet of the masses. And English was the language that the man on the street spoke. The gentry conversed in French. It was only later that intellectuals staked claim to him.”

Will, Kapur admits, proves that he takes Bollywood along wherever he goes. “I went to Dharavi and took pictures, and the art direction is inspired by that shoot,” he laughs. “It’s very, very Bollywood.” He recalls a time after the release of the 1998 British biographical film, Elizabeth released. The New York Times called it an “MTV version” in its review. “For a long time, I thought it was a compliment,” he says. We crack up.

We decide to give him a real compliment — we still love Mr India; when can we hope for a sequel? “Ask Anil and Boney Kapoor to hand me the rights and the freedom to make it my way. During that movie, we did what we wanted; we weren’t scared to take a risk. We were fearless It has to be made like that, if again. If that happens, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.”

The filmmaker says Indian producers don't feel strongly about the water scarcity issue; meanwhile is all set to revolutionise cinema with a 13-minute short on Buddha
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 26, 2015)

Shekhar Kapur is scouting for an actress to play Cleopatra in his TV series; also working on a series on William Shakespeare
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 17, 2015)

Shekhar Kapur is all set for a royal reign on television. The writer-director recently announced a "huge" TV series on Cleopatra and is currently scouting for an actress to play her. "I'm travelling all over the world. I may have to change my email id soon with all the pictures flooding in," he laughs. "It took me eight months to find Cate Blanchett to play Elizabeth. I hope I find my Cleopatra sooner."

The role has become synonymous with Elizabeth Taylor after she starred in the 1963 historical. Shekhar is looking for a younger actress to play her from the age of 18 to 39. "She was not Egyptian but of Greek descent. From her statues, Cleopatra looked a little like Jennifer Lawrence which is not to say that we'll be going to her, she would be too busy," he says. Shekhar points out that everything we know about the Queen was from the Romans who saw women as subordinate to men and hated her. They believed she was an evil seductress who made Julius Caesar and Marc Antony fall in love with her. The series will re-image her history and show her as a brighter, richer and better administrator-ruler than the men of her time. "I see her as a powerful woman, a conqueror, like my Elizabeth and Bandit Queen. The series will retell her story," he asserts.

Does he view her death as murder or suicide? "It was suicide. Octavian Augustus, the Caeser then, defeated her in battle and wanted to take her to Rome in chains to destroy her myth. But before he could do so, she died with a snake—the symbol of spirituality, infinity and motherhood— at her breast. Even in death she stole the show from Augustus. He was a great ruler but no one remembers him. They remember Cleopatra and the myth she created," he reasons, adding that he is in talks with four channels and hopes to start filming soon.

But before Cleopatra he will film another TV series on William Shakespeare. "It's the Bard's life story. I have Baz Luhrmann's screenplay writer, Craig Pearce, who worked with him on The Great Gatsby, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, collaborating with me," exults Shekhar, pointing out that today's feature films are all about franchises. "They are entertaining but not the best stories. The best dramas, like Breaking Bad and Orange Is The New Black are playing on TV. Even in India, people are hooked on western TV series which are drawing the best directors."

With his futuristic fantasy drama, Paani, expected to set a shooting date by October, how will he juggle three projects? "Only two episodes of the TV series, House Of Cards, playing on Netflix was directed by executive producer David Fincher. After that, it's a new director every week. I will direct the first two episodes, then, since I have conceived and worked with the writer, I will oversee the two series and focus on Paani," he says.