RGV’s Sholay set to hit theatres on July 13

[Ramu]

The much talked about Ram Gopal Varma’s Sholay is almost ready. The date of release is set to be Friday, the 13th of July. While the industry is divided on the remaking of an epic, it could be a good money making proposition for RGV.
IT IS SAID that Ram Gopal Varma, has two dreams: to remake The Godfather and Sholay. With the making of Sarkar he has achieved one of those dreams and the other in the form of new Sholay is on its way.
Ram Gopal Varma’s ’Sholay’ is ready for release. The date is, Friday the 13th of July.
Inauspicious according to the Christian calendar. “But not by my calendar. I like to do the unthinkable. That’s what I did by doing my own take on ’Sholay’, didn’t I?” reasons the resourceful Ramu.
Though he doesn’t want to say anything more on the eagerly awaited multi-starrer that has Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Sushmita Sen and Mohanlal, I have learnt from impeccable sources that a lot of the footage from the original ’Sholay’ has been pruned away in the ’remix.’
It is also said that the original Ramesh Sippy 3-hrs-19-min epic has been reduced to close to 2-hrs -30-mins in Ramu’s version of the epic.
“Though the length has been reduced, there’re more characters in Ramu’s ’Sholay’ than in Sippy’s and the new ’Sholay’ is very very different from the old,” says someone close to the project who’s had a dekko.
A sneak peak of the film shows that the actor to watch besides Amitabh Bachchan as Gabbar is Sushmita Sen. Dressed in black, her silences as the widowed Radha will stun the audiences.
As for the ’Mehbooba’ track featuring the senior and junior Bachchan with Urmila, Ram Gopal Varma is shocked to see pictures of the secretly-shot song in Karjat being leaked out on the net.
“I haven’t given out any pictures. In fact I don’t intend to show the song in my promos. So it has to be images taken on a mobile camera during the shoot,” says Ramu.
In RGV’s version Amitabh Bachchan who played Jai in the original plays Gabbar Singh. Mohanlal, the popular South Indian actor, plays the role of Thakur Baldev Singh played by Sanjeev Kumar. Prashant Raj Sachdev plays Jai, Sushmita Sen plays Radha and Nisha Kothari is Basanti.
To talk about the original Sholay, it is the monster classic of Bollywood that ran for almost five years and most Bollywood fans have seen it a fistful of times. Now, it remains to be seen how successful the new avatar of Sholay would be!


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