Ramesh Sippy Reacts To Shakti Remake Plans

Director Shree Narayan Singh’s decision to remake that powerful father-son 1992 drama Shakti seems ill-conceived. Ramesh Sippy has already done what needed  to be done to that particular Salim-Javed script.  What more more can Shree Naryan  do  ? How can he   hope to  encore the  casting coup  of Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan that Ramesh Sippy  had pulled  off? And  besides, look at what Ram Gopal Varma  did  to  Ramesh  Sippy’s Sholay!

When I  reached out to  Ramesh  Sippy he said, “What can I  say? I’ve already voiced my opinion  on remakes very clearly when  Mr Ram Gopal Varma decided to  do his own thing with my  Sholay. I don’t want to comment  on  this proposed remake  because  I know  nothing about it. I haven’t seen any  of the  director’s  work . I don’t know what he intends to  do with my script.”

Ramesh recalls that his  film was  officially a remake of a Tamil film. “We took the official rights  of Thanga Pathakkam. But we retained almost nothing  from the original. Salim-Javed took the  plot to a completely different level. A remake  only makes  sense  if it improves  on  the  original?”

If he  had  the chance to do so would he   like  to stop Shakti from being remade?

Says Ramesh, “I’ve no authority to stop  the film. Only the  producers, in this  case Mushir and  Riaz, have  the power  to intervene.”