Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan.
The era of remakes in Bollywood is not from today but for years. Remakes of films have been made earlier also. Apart from other languages, Hindi films have been remade in Hindi only. ‘Devdas’ comes to mind first among such films. While Dilip Kumar was in the lead role in its first version, Shahrukh Khan was in the second. Both the films received immense love. Apart from this, there is another film which got a great remake, but the second one did not fare even a bit as well as the first version. Today we will talk about this film, which failed in terms of earnings. Aishwarya Rai was in the lead role in this film. Despite a lot of expectations, the film could not be successful. Abhishek Bachchan was also seen romancing with Aishwarya Rai in the film.
First conversion was a hit
Umrao Jaan Ada, written in 1899 by poet and writer Mirza Hadi Ruswa, is considered one of the finest novels of Urdu literature. The story revolves around a girl who is sold into a brothel as a child and becomes one of the most famous courtesans of Lucknow. The novel has inspired several film and television adaptations in both India and Pakistan. Of the two most talked about adaptations in India, Rekha was seen in one and Aishwarya Rai was the lead heroine in the other. In the year 2006, JP Dutta made ‘Umrao Jaan’ with Aishwarya Rai in the lead role. It also featured strong actors like Abhishek Bachchan, Shabana Azmi, Sunil Shetty, Divya Dutta and Kulbhushan Kharbanda in important roles.
Priyanka was offered the film before Aishwarya
The acting of the former Miss World and the direction of JP Dutta were not liked by the audience and the film failed at the box office. ‘Umrao Jaan’, made for Rs 15 crore, became Aishwarya Rai’s biggest flop. According to Box Office India portal, it grossed only Rs 7.42 crore in India. Before the release of ‘Umrao Jaan’, JP Dutta had revealed that Priyanka Chopra, not Aishwarya, was his first choice for the film. Speaking to PTI in 2005, the director had said, ‘I had reached a point where I had to take a decision. I wanted to work with Priyanka. I saw him as Umrao Jaan. But we were at a dead end.
Priyanka had given clarification
He revealed that Priyanka had rejected the film due to her busy schedule. Priyanka also spoke on rejecting Umrao Jaan and told PTI, ‘I had many good projects before this role. JP Saheb wanted my dates for 90 consecutive days, which I could not give him. If this work had not happened, I could have done films. When so much is happening, I can’t think about what hasn’t happened.
Didn’t work for 12 years
JP Dutta made India’s best war drama film ‘Border’ in the year 1997. JP was so disappointed with the failure of ‘Umrao Jaan’ that he postponed his next film ‘Paltan’ for 12 years. After staying away from films for 12 years, he made a comeback with this film in 2018. This war drama starring actors like Jackie Shroff, Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Harshvardhan Rane, Sonal Chauhan and Esha Gupta was also rejected outright by the audience. JP Dutta is now working on ‘Border 2’. He has cast stars like Sunny Deol, Diljit Dosanjh and Varun Dhawan for this film.
