Anil Kapoor: Family front

My children don’t want to do remakes: Anil Kapoor.

Actor-producer Anil Kapoor, who has been a part of remake films including Virasat and Nayak, says his children are not interested in the genre and would stick to originals, according to IANS.

“Newer generation doesn’t want to do remakes. At least my children don’t want to do remakes. They want to work, act and produce original scripts. Either they want to adapt books or make original screenplays,” Kapoor told reporters at an event in Mumbai.

The actor has two daughters — actor Sonam and producer Rhea — and son Harshvardhan who is yet to make his debut in showbiz. “Whenever I try to corrupt them and convince them to make and work in remakes because they do well commercially, they say, ‘Dad, you have done it, we are not going to do it’. That’s the new generation. As for me, I will do it every now and then to keep the production company rolling. I will have to do that.”

Kapoor entered production business in 2002 with the comedy Badhaai Ho Badhaai and followed by My Wife’s Murder (2005), Gandhi, My Father (2007) and Aisha (2010).

His production venture Aisha and his recently announced movie Herogiri are book adaptations and the 52-year-old says despite being inspired by literary works, both the films’ scripts are original. “Both these films are original interpretations. Even the film Herogiri, a script that we are working on currently, is an adaptation of a book. But when you will read the script, it’s completely original,” the actor-cum-producer says.

It seems that Kapoor’s younger daughter producer Rhea is the one who is extremely fond of novels. Zeenews.india.com reports that after presenting a modern adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel Emma through her debut film Aisha, Rhea now has bought the rights to Indian author Mainik Dhar`s Herogiri and is working assiduously on her own take and adaptation of the novel.

Herogiri is an Indian take on the superhero genre. It is said to be a racy, action-packed novel about good and evil, power and corruption, love and violence. The original narrative follows the life of Arnab Bannerjee, a shy 25-year-old, who has little excitement in his life other than tracking down missing books as an assistant librarian in a college. But everything changes the day he wakes up to discover superhuman powers within him. He begins his crusade against eve-teasers, highway robbers, corrupt policemen and scheming politicians and their goons, according to zeenews.india.com.

However, when asked how different the script would be from the storyline of the novel, Kapoor states, “Few things are inspired by the book, but when you see the screenplay you will realise that it is our original work. At least we are not making a frame to frame screenplay. They are all basically original and that’s what youngsters are doing these days,” he adds.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2012.