Last year, actor Ayushmann Khurrana had posted a video of his piano rendition of the Italian track ‘Bella Ciao’ on Twitter. His post came with a plea to Indian filmmakers to remake Netflix’s Money Heist, the most searched show on Google in 2020, and cast him as its protagonist, The Professor. “I’m dying to do something like this,” he wrote. The tweet made one thing clear: not only are popular actors seeing new opportunities in long-format shows, they are also willing to follow the template of already successful dramas like Money Heist. Only time will tell if a director or producer will grant Khurrana’s wish, but the actor should, perhaps, take heart in a growing trend. There are already a number of international remakes in the 2021 pipeline which will release both theatrically and digitally.
First up is the Hindi remake of The Girl on the Train (2016). Starring Parineeti Chopra, the adaptation of this acclaimed murder mystery will premiere on Netflix on February 26. There is also Looop Lapeta, in which Taapsee Pannu runs endlessly to rescue her boyfriend, much like Franka Potente did in the German film, Run Lola Run (1998). Ram Madhvani, who last directed Aarya (2020), Disney+ Hotstar’s remake of Dutch crime drama Penoza (2010-2017), now takes inspiration from the Korean film The Terror Live (2013) for Dhamaka, a thriller starring Kartik Aaryan. The year ends with Laal Singh Chaddha, Aamir Khan’s much-awaited remake of the 1994 classic, Forrest Gump.
Among web shows, Disney+ Hotstar has greenlit an Indian adaptation of the British miniseries The Night Manager (2016). The platform’s programming already includes shows like The Office (2019-), a desi variant of Ricky Gervais’s popular sitcom, and Out of Love (2019-), an adaptation of the British show Doctor Foster (2015-2017). Made by Applause Entertainment, Hostages (2019-), too, took its inspiration from an Israeli drama of the same name, while its comedy Mind the Malhotras (2019-) was a remake of La Famiglia (2016-2017). It has also adapted legal dramas Criminal Justice (2019-) and Your Honour (2020), and bought the rights to another Israeli title, Fauda (2015-). Meanwhile, its adaptation of the French show Call My Agent! (2015-2020) is in production. Applause, it would seem, has hit upon a formula.
For Applause CEO Sameer Nair, it all boils down to “the story” and whether it is “adaptable” for the Indian market. “We look for a cultural match, for a story’s universality,” he says. “Stories like Call My Agent!, Fauda and Luther, we believe, can translate very well to an Indian context.” Nair believes Indian viewers are willing to re-watch popular international titles told from an Indian perspective. “Only a very small, niche category of people have seen the original. A larger audience is always desirous of seeing things in their own language, context and [with local] performers.”
The Indian film industry has come a long way from copy-pasting international titles without giving their ‘inspirations’ due credit. Filmmakers and studios know that audiences now measure the remake against the original, expecting more than just a faithful imitation. Ajit Andhare, COO, Viacom18 Studios, who is producing Laal Singh Chaddha, says there were many reasons to remake the Tom Hanks film: “Forrest Gump is an allegorical tale of a kind that has never been done in Indian cinema. Its remake reflects our context, our journey as a society and outlook on life.” Andhare goes on to praise actor-writer Atul Kulkarni’s adaptation. “It actually feels more Indian than American in its moorings.”
While Kulkarni has set his adaptation in India, writer-director Ribhu Dasgupta decided that his Girl on the Train must unfold in London. Given the female protagonist’s fixation with a couple she sees on a train, a foreign setting helps give the film’s borrowed narrative some coherence. Regardless of the location, Dasgupta feels there is “plenty to relate to, in terms of emotion and mystery” as the film captures aspects of “rejection, loneliness and voyeurism”.
For Aakash Bhatia, who is making his directorial debut with Looop Lapeta, the prospect of adapting the innovative Run Lola Run, the film offers audiences three varied accounts of a single event, is both exciting and challenging. He says, “My approach has been to consciously play with style and form while tightly holding on to the emotional core of our story and characters.” Even if the inspiration comes from elsewhere, the ethic, it’s clear, remains rooted: Make in India. Make for India.
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