No hero? No heroine? No problem. The curious case of KJo's Shuddhi

by Gautam Chintamani For years people on either side of the Hindi film business- those who make it and those for whom they were supposedly made for- had one thing in common. A vast majority of the people who made up these two sides agreed that our films should become more like Western films, namely Hollywood. Someone important once famously warned that we should be wary of what we ask for, lest we get it. Lo and behold, the more Bollywood changes, the more like Hollywood it becomes. In a first of sorts for Hindi cinema, yesterday Karan Johar announced the release date for the film Shuddhi, even though the project doesn’t even have its principle cast in place. First, Kareena Kapoor exited the project, saying in an interview that she wasn’t sure of the film’s status and was re-thinking her decision to be part of the film. Then, Hrithik Roshan, the then male lead of Shuddhi, announced his inglorious exit from a project that would have reunited him with Agneepath director, Karan Malhotra, and with Kareena Kapoor after a decade. [caption id=“attachment_1396875” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: Twitter[/caption] Shuddhi has already had more than its fair share of false starts. It has been in the making for almost a year and a half now without a single frame being filmed. With the recent pullout by the lead duo, many would have thought it was curtains for Shuddhi, but not Johar. He’s announced December 25, 2015 as the date that the world would witness Shuddhi. This kind of action by which a film is reversed engineered to a pre-determined release date without finalizing actors – or, in some cases, a final script – is a common phenomenon in Hollywood. It is an offshoot of highly successful franchises and concept films like Spiderman or Men in Black. However, it’s not the sort of thing we’ve seen in Bollywood. For Karan Johar to go ahead and broadcast a release date without a lead pair indicates just how commerce seems to be calling the shots in popular Hindi cinema. Almost every film is being seen as a product that needs to be ‘packaged’, ‘marketed’ and ‘launched’. Perhaps Johar’s announcement is perhaps a natural evolution of Brand Bollywood. Look a little closer and you’d see how we reached here. Back in 2003, when producer Tutu Sharma’s Paanch was stuck in the labyrinth of the censor board, he ‘launched’ _Alwyn Kalichara_n to be directed by Anurag Kashyap. Kashyap was taken aback when he heard he was supposedly shooting Alwyn Kallicharan in Delhi because he was actually waiting for Paanch to release. Nothing has happened with Alwyn Kalicharan, but then, perhaps nothing was supposed to. Announcing Alwyn Kallicharan allowed Sharma to remind everyone of Paanch. Similarly, closer to Johar’s home, the sequel to the surprise hit Dostana has supposedly been in the works for years. The landscape of Hindi cinema has transformed from the time of its initial announcement — Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was supposed to star in the film, but she has since not just married her supposed co-star Abhishek Bachchan, but they have a two year old child as well. Abhishek Bachchan has ceased to be a so-called ‘A’ lister. Still, the idea of a sequel to Dostana still manages to make news. If the date Johar has announced is to be taken seriously, then the time that it took for Shuddhi to not takeoff is almost the same time frame that the project now has to find a lead pair that will not abscond, reworking the script to suit the new cast and put together a crew.