In the ’90s, Ram Gopal Varma’s Rangeela (1995) didn’t just change Bollywood—it skyrocketed the careers of its stars Aamir Khan, Urmila Matondkar and Jackie Shroff, and cemented RGV as a trailblazer in Indian cinema. Recently, RGV slammed Indian filmmakers for underestimating the audience’s intelligence, pointing out how Hollywood can deliver a film like Oppenheimer with big stars, while Bollywood churns out disappointments like Thugs of Hindostan (2018). However, he did note that sometimes, luck can turn a flop into a hit.
Citing an example, in a chat with Galatta Plus, RGV mentioned that Aamir Khan was obsessed with Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump (1994), starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, while they were working on Rangeela. Notably, Forrest Gump was later remade in Hindi as Laal Singh Chaddha, directed by Advait Chandan, with Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan starring.
“Aamir loves Forrest Gump. So it (Laal Singh Chaddha) was like a dream project for him. And he’d been making it in his head. It could have come out well or not, I don’t know. But the point is, by the time you reach the end, he’s catering to an audience who had never seen Forrest Gump. It was basically an Aamir Khan film; it needn’t have a history behind it. So, what Aamir took from Forrest Gump as subject matter might not have piqued the interest of the audience. But all these are speculations, by the way,” he said.
Written by actor-screenwriter Atul Kulkarni, Laal Singh Chaddha also starred Naga Chaitanya, Mona Singh, and Manav Vij in pivotal roles.
Not long back, Mona Singh had revealed that despite the film’s lukewarm box office response, a heartbroken Aamir Khan hosted a party to celebrate the team’s hard work and everyone was happy. “Aamir sir is the only actor who could throw a party after a flop to honour everyone’s efforts. He said, ‘What if the film didn’t work? It shouldn’t stop us from celebrating,”‘she had said in an interview with Siddharth Kannan.
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