Feature: Larger than life

Hero no more, post-Krrish, everyone wants to be a superhero. After Abhishek’s Drona, now Shah Rukh is the Joker, writes Pratim D. Gupta

Friendship can take you a long way in Bollywood. In an industry where one big flop means a new director is dead and buried and may never be reincarnated, Shirish Kunder has got the biggest lifeline a director can dream of.
After his debacle debut Jaan-e-Mann, which came in with Don last Diwali and sank despite its super soundtrack and stylised ways, Shirish has managed to convince Shah Rukh Khan to produce his next film. Shirish, of course, is the husband of Shah Rukh’s best friend Farah Khan. Shirish and Farah spent weeks in Melbourne during the shooting of SRK’s Chak De India to make King Khan see money in their movie.
SRK has bitten the bait, even while pumping more and more money into Farah’s own film Om Shanti Om, to release in the last quarter of 2007. Friendship apart, the project has one big thing going for it — SRK’s first superhero film.
Tentatively titled Joker, the Shirish Kunder film will be a lavish sci-fi epic with the Shah Rukh playing a comic superhero.
Call it the Krrish effect or the reaction to Hrithik. Shah Rukh, recount sources, first got jittery about the Roshan rage after Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai. Then the challenger hit a rough patch and the champ breathed easy. But now with Don not a patch on the popularity of Krrish and Dhoom:2 vaulting Hrithik into envy league, Shah Rukh has decided to take a superheroic leap.
Joker is also being seen as an attempt to showcase the state-of-the-art visual effects wing of SRK’s Red Chillies Entertainment. “I want to do films which push the limits of Indian cinema in terms of special effects and animation,” Shah Rukh had told t2 in a recent interview.
The Hrithik ripple has, of course, touched the Khan camp as much as it has the Bachchan bastion. For first in line to slip into superhero robes is Abhishek Bachchan. Before Joker, Goldie Behl’s Drona will hit theatres with Beta B playing a superhero.
While the plot of the film is being closely guarded by the cast and crew of the movie, what is known is that Drona is set in a futuristic world where Abhishek is the title character — superhero Drona, with superheroine Priyanka Chopra by his side and engaged in a fight to the finish with supervillain Kay Kay Menon.
“I do play a larger-than-life figure but that’s all I can tell you now,” said Abhishek, but Kay Kay was more forthcoming: “Yes, it is about an imaginary world where we wear these lavish costumes and have our own kingdoms to defend.”
Huge budgets — Goldie has in fact run out of money with lots left to be shot — big co-stars and eye-grabbing visual effects, no super prop is being left unturned to steal the Krrish thunder.
That possibly explains why despite having a sureshot winner in a sequel to Krrish, Rakesh Roshan is taking it slow. With Abhishek and Shah Rukh both going the superhero way, Papa Roshan is playing the waiting game and producing a small comedy without Hrithik before conjuring up Krrish 2. He would rather have Hrithik doing some serious contemporary cinema with Anurag Basu while SRK and Abhi get their superhero act together. “Krrish worked because he is the Indian screen’s first original superhero,” Rakesh Roshan said recently.
What he left unsaid was, however good or bad, Drona and Joker will bear the ‘me too’ mark.