Here's why Brahmastra stands a better chance than Vikram Vedha at the box-office

Ayan Mukerji’s  Brahmastra and Puskhar-Gayathri’s Vikram Vedha are the two September  releases on which the beleaguered Bollywood industry has its hopes pinned. One can no longer make any logical prediction on what works and what doesn’t. But yes, Brahmastra is at least an attempt to give the audiences an entirely new theatre experience, something they haven’t seen, something that would stimulate their senses beyond the ordinary experience  provided by movies on the OTT platform.

Vikram Vedha, I am afraid, is nothing that the average Indian family would make an effort to go into the movie theatres to see. It is apparently an exact remake of the original. The cardinal error of doing a remake, besides the fact that a remake in principle is lazy filmmaking, unless you can add something radical to the original, is to have the same director do both the original and the remake.

This was the case recently with Jersey . The same director, Gowtam Naidu Tinnanuri, did both the Tamil and Hindi versions with the end result that the Tamil and Hindi versions, though  well-made, were interchangeable except for the actors.

Vikram Veda is helmed in Hindi  by the same co-directors, Pushkar–Gayathri. Sure, the actors are different. But the original 2017 film in Tamil, has been on OTT for two years now. It is  doubtful that audiences will make a rush for the remake just because an A-lister Hrithik Roshan and a B-lister Saif Ali Khan have replaced the outstanding duo of Madhavan and  Vijay Sethupathi in the original.

When Disney+Hotstar announced Cuttputlli, the remake  of the Tamil film Ratsasan as their big premiere for September 2, Zee5 pulled out a rabbit from its bag of tricks. They dubbed  Rakshasudu, the Telugu version of Ratsasan into Hindi, titled it Gumnam, and released it alongside Cuttputlli, on the same Friday.

While Disney-Hotstar acquired Cuttputlli for Rs 90 crores, Zee5 had to pay nothing for  Gumnam as Rakshasudu was already in their repertoire. With the recession claiming most, if not all theatre releases, it is time  for the film industry to exercise some prudence in their filmmaking. Acquiring remakes at exorbitant prices when the original is just a click away,  makes no sense.

This brings me back to Brahmastra. While its actual merits and demerits remain to be seen, it is at least original, not a remake and not copied from a Korean source. At least it stands a fighting chance to revive the lost glory of the Bollywood box-office.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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