B'wood replays the past

Will the 'coloured' Mughal-e-Azam hold its own with the likes of Veer-Zaara releasing at the same time, asks Saibal Chatterjee.

The festival season is less than a month away and Bollywood's big banners are gearing up for box office battle. With a formidable line-up of mega-budget films ready for release in the coming three months, a hit-starved industry is hoping for a dramatic turnaround in its fortunes.

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In the release pipeline are films like Yash Chopra's love saga, Veer-Zaara, Ram Gopal Varma's horror flick Vaastu Shastra and musical Naach, Abbas-Mustan's thriller, Aitraaz, and Subhash Ghai's magnum opus Kisna. Amid all the hype that is bound to be unleashed in the run-up to the arrival of these films at the theatres, one interesting development is the proposed re-release of K. Asif's 1960s classic, Mughal-e-Azam, now in full colour and with a remastered soundtrack.

Will the Dilip Kumar-Madhubala love story be able to hold its own as the likes of Veer-Zaara and Kisna come snapping at its heels? It might be apt to look at the success that a digitally enhanced Sholay has had at the box office. With eleven prints released in Mumbai last month, the 1975 Ramesh Sippy blockbuster put many new releases in the shade. That was hardly surprising. As Sippy says: "Sholay is a part of Bollywood folklore. It has seeped into the psyche of the people." What he left unsaid was that they do not make it quite like Sholay anymore!

The colour version of Mughal- e-Azam is ready for release

Mughal-e-Azam is, of course, a much older film and Gen Now audiences might have to put in an extra bit of effort to recall its timeless value. But for filmgoers of an earlier era, the re-release would be a replay of a piece of the glorious history of Hindi cinema's golden era. It is this mix of nostalgia for some and re-discovery for others that would give

Mughal-e-Azam

a fair bit of play on the buzz-machines at work around the multiplexes dotting India's metropolitan areas.

Says Ravi Chopra, who is almost ready with a colour version of Naya Daur, yet another Dilip Kumar starrer: "We are waiting and watching. I have deliberately slowed down a bit because I want to see exactly how Mughal-e-Azam fares so that we do not repeat the mistakes." The colour version of Naya Daur is slated to be ready for release early next year.