We live in a time when the film has succeeded in breaking through linguistic boundaries. Not only are people in India and throughout the world welcoming of films from many languages, but filmmakers are also interested in recreating or adapting films from various languages that have compelling tales to convey. While the Hindi film industry has recently seen a slew of remakes of South Indian films, Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions is in the process of remaking a handful of its earlier films in South Indian languages.
Talking to Bollywood Hungama, Dharma Productions CEO Apoorva Mehta revealed that other makers have shown interest in remaking a couple of their older films. “We are talking about the remaking of one or two of our films, but it’s too premature to speak. One of our older films has shown a lot of interest with one or two players. So we are talking to them and we’re hopeful that we can make an announcement on that at some point,” he shared.
However, Dharma Productions is presently preparing to release Selfiee, a replica of the Malayalam film Driving License. Suraj Venjaramoodu and Prithviraj Sukumaran were featured inside the original movie. Prithviraj Sukumaran’s production studio is also co-producing the Hindi adaptation.
“Most absolutely,” Mehta said when asked if such cross-state partnerships might be expected more regularly in the future. Today, if one south movie is popular in the south, it is always sought to be remade in Hindi with collaborators. Similarly, when we create a popular Hindi movie, we are constantly in contact with individuals inside the South who want to replicate it in their own language.
So this will continue because, in the end, content is language agnostic, as well as if it has been successful inside one language, there seems to be a strong probability that by changing it slightly, this will also be successful inside the language in which you are creating it. So, when you’re creating a successful picture, there seem to be a lot of other barriers which have already been overcome. All of the barriers in terms of acceptance of such subject, the subject matter as it is made, have been already crossed.”
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