In 1968, Bimal Roy produced the film Do Dooni Char starring Kishore Kumar and Asit Sen with Tanuja, which was based on a Bengali film Bhranti Bilas written by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. This was in turn, inspired by William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. Fourteen years later, Gulzar remade the same film with Sanjeev Kumar, Deven Verma and Moushumi Chatterjee as Angoor.
Angoor went on to become the most popular remake of the lot, though in 1998, Amitabh Bachchan and Govinda did Bade Miyan Chote Miyan on the same lines for David Dhawan. The plot was remade into a 2014-Punjabi film called Double Di Trouble, starring Dharmendra and Gippy Grewal with Minnisha Lamba.
Apparently, while making the 2013-Shah-Rukh-Khan-starrer Chennai Express, Rohit Shetty had planned to work with Shah Rukh on yet another remake of Angoor, which for some reason, did not go as planned. “When you plan an Angoor (grape) with SRK, it will become a watermelon,” Rohit had famously said with a sigh when things didn’t go according to plan.
Now, a strong buzz in the market is that the Shakespearean comedy will indeed take shape again, although with Ranveer Singh in the lead role.
According to a source, “There is a talk that Rohit has developed a comedy for Ranveer who is also rumoured to start a fresh film with Karan Johar as a director, which is not Takht. So, it remains to be seen as to how soon Rohit makes the announcement.” Interestingly it is filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj who may appear to be a staunch William Shakespeare bhakt, having made films such as Maqbool, Omkara and Haider, all of which were based on Shakespearean tales Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet, respectively.
