Bye Gabbar, hi Ajgar

[Ramu]

Filmmaker Ramgopal Varma is riding the horns of a dilemma with his new movie. The title of the movie has been jinxed right from the start. Varma ran into copyright issues when rather grandly he first decided to call it Ram Gopal Varma Ke Sholay . The word Sholay was what was causing the problem.
So the director settled on Ram Gopal Varma Ka Gabbar , next. Apparently, even that ran into trouble as Gabbar too was registered under the Copyright Act by the original makers of Sholay .
There is more bad news for Varma. A Bollywood source said he may have to change the name of the main character in his movie to something like Ajgar Singh as the producers of Sholay have taken objections to the same. “It won’t be a surprise if Varma’s film is now called Ajgar Singh,” said the source.
“Although Sholay is considered to be a generic word, and there have been several films made in the past like Ramgarh Ke Sholay and Garhwali Sholay, it is unclear if the argument of copyright over the word holds true. For instance, Ekta Kapoor is already making a film title Gabbar Singh in Bhojpuri,” added the source.
Varma has already changed the name of two important characters in his movie, Basanti and Thakur to Ghungroo and Narsimhan respectively . While the original Sholay had Basanti as the tangewali , Varma’s Ghungroo is an autorikshawali . Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay had Gabbar chopping off both the hands of Thakur Baldev Singh; Varma’s film has Narsimhan (played by Mohanlal) losing both his wrists.
Varma, meanwhile, has always maintained that his is a tribute to Sholay and not a copy of the movie. Bollywood believes that it won’t be a bad idea for the filmmaker to ultimately change the title to, say, Ram Gopal Varma ka Ajgar , because the movie has already generated enough curiosity even before its release.


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