Before Aamir Khan etched his memory-loss revenge thriller into Bollywood history, ‘Ghajini’ might have had a very different face: Salman Khan. Yes, you read that right! Producer Boney Kapoor recently revealed that he initially imagined Salman in the lead role when he decided to remake the Tamil blockbuster ‘Ghajini’ for Hindi audiences.
“After watching Suriya’s original in 2006, I felt Salman would be perfect,” Boney told Rediff. He recalled thinking about Salman’s look in ‘Tere Naam’, where the superstar had long hair in the first half and a shaved head in the second, when his character is in an ashram for the mentally ill.
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“With his chiselled physique and the hair-pruned look, he could carry Suriya’s role brilliantly,” Boney said.
But as Bollywood fans now know, Aamir Khan eventually became the face of the film creating one of the most iconic blockbusters of the 2000s.
The battle for remake rights
Getting the remake rights was not easy. Boney Kapoor reached out to the original film’s producers, only to find that the rights were with Allu Aravind, the Telugu distributor. Enter Madhu Mantena, who promised Boney that the deal would happen. “Ho jayega,” he kept saying.
Meanwhile, Pradeep Rawat, the actor who played the antagonist in the original Tamil film, showed the movie to Aamir Khan. For almost six months, Aamir debated whether to take on the Hindi remake. During this period, Boney was left hanging. When Aamir finally said yes, Madhu Mantena and Allu Aravind decided to produce the film themselves, and Boney lost the chance to make his vision with Salman.
From ‘Kajri’ to ‘Ghajini’
Interestingly, ‘Ghajini’ wasn’t always ‘Ghajini’. Its working title was ‘Kajri’, and the story’s roots trace back to multiple inspirations.
The core revenge plot took cues from Hollywood’s ‘Memento’ and the romantic comedy ‘Happy Go Lovely’. The first half of the movie also borrowed elements from the 1969 Bollywood film ‘Sajan’.
When Aamir came on board, he co-wrote the screenplay with director AR Murugadoss, tweaking the story to appeal to Hindi cinema audiences. The film, released in 2008, became a landmark psychological action thriller.
Alongside Aamir, the film starred Asin, Jiah Khan, and Pradeep Rawat, and featured Aamir’s unforgettable portrayal of Sanjay Singhania, a man on a violent quest for revenge after an attack leaves his fiancee dead and himself suffering from anterograde amnesia.
‘Ghajini’ didn’t just give Aamir Khan back-to-back blockbusters; it also brought the South Indian mass-action template into mainstream Hindi cinema.