MUMBAI: A controversy seems to be brewing between Bollywood producer Vipul Shah and the ‘Thuppakki’ director A Murugadoss.
Apparently, the ‘Thuppakki’ story was to be made in Hindi for Vipul Shah with Akshay Kumar in the lead. But Murugadoss got impatient. He made the film in Tamil with Vijay in the lead, thereby eroding the novelty-value of the actioner about an army-man’s battle against terrorism.
Akshay, we hear, is unhappy about the betrayal. And in his characteristically undemonstrative way he won’t make a song-and-dance about it.
Says a source close to the project, “Akshay and Murugadoss were in talks about this project for nearly three years. Right after Murugadoss did ‘Ghajini’ with Aamir Khan he had sounded out Akshay on this idea of an army-man’s battle against terrorism. Akshay loves the army life. In fact at one point in his life he wanted to join the army before he became an actor. Once he chose to be an actor he craved to play an army officer. This was his chance to do so. Akshay told Murugadoss to work on the script.”
That’s how the plot and script of ‘Thuppakki’ were born. After Murugadoss wrote it he got impatient and decided to make it in his mother tongue Tamil.
“Now that the film is a superhit in Tamil, Vipul and Akshay have swallowed their bile and agreed to let Murugadoss do the film in Hindi,” informs our source.
Producer Vipul Shah admitted ‘Thuppakki’was originally meant to be in Hindi. “Akshay and I had discussed it with Murugadoss. It was supposed to be a Hindi original. He decided to make it in Tamil first. Now we see that as an advantage because the film has a captive audience. It’s such a huge hit that it can only add numbers to the Hindi version.”
The director A Murugadoss defended himself, “After ‘Ghajini’ I wanted to do another Hindi film immediately. But the stars in Mumbai were busy. So I decided to make a Tamil film. By God’s grace ‘Thuppakki’ is a big blockbuster. The Hindi remake can only get better.”
Murugadoss isn’t in favour of making too many changes in the Hindi remake. “In ‘Ghajini’ we changed the climax in Hindi because people felt the Tamil climax was a bit weak. But in ‘Thuppakki’ the audiences are freaking out on each and every scene.”
