MUMBAI: Though Salman Khan has come a long way since his days of Sooraj Barjatya’s family sagas Hum Aapke Hain Koun and Hum Saath Saath Hain, he hasn’t really forgotten his one-time best-friend with whom relations strained after the infamous ‘black-buck’ incident.
A source tells Businessofcinema.com, “At a time when producers were clamouring to sign Salman in action films, he chose to do a full-on family film, his first since Sooraj’s Hum Saath Saath Hain in 1999 because the script and characters of Ready reminded him of Sooraj’s joint-family films. Salman told the director Anees Bazmi that he wanted to make Sooraj proud.”
Now the superstar Salman wants the super-director Sooraj of the most successful family film of all times to view Ready, which among friends, Salman describes as a tribute to Sooraj Barjatya.
Bazmi says, “It’s true Ready is a modern rendition of Hum Aapke Hain Koun. Sooraj-ji is one of my all-time favourite directors. I’ve to confess I went to Salman with the subject of Ready in the hope that I could recreate some of the magic of Sooraj-ji’s cinema. Salman immediately caught on. Like Sooraj-ji’s films, Ready is about a large joint-family with characters constantly bustling in and out of the household. The only difference is that the times have changed. Everyone in Sooraj-ji’s cinema was kind and well-meaning and well-fed. The people in the joint-family in Ready reflect the morality and diet of our times.”
Bazmi admits a screening of Ready for Sooraj is on the cards. “Sooraj-ji will recognize the same masoomiyat (innocence) and sharaarat in Salman in Ready that we saw in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Hum Saath Saath Hain. My film is a very small homage to Sooraj’s family values. As soon as we’re ready with Ready we’d like to screen our film for Soorajji.”
Suggestions on how to improve the product are also welcome from Sooraj.
Salman, who has lately been hanging out with an entirely new coterie of friends, misses those quaint uncomplicated days of Sooraj’s cinema.
