Face-off: Amitabh Bachchan as Gabbar Singh from Ram Gopal Varma ke Sholay and (above) Amjad Khan with Dharmendra in a still from the original Sholay

If you can, do. If you can’t, remake. Or that’s what we always thought. Now it appears that a remake is no longer a formula for success. The year 2006 demonstrated just that. Three films — including the much-hyped Don and Umrao Jaan — were panned by critics. Umrao Jaan led to a loss of 90 per cent revenue for the distributors of the film. Don may have done commendable business abroad but did not fare well in India. And the remake of the superhit Jai Santoshi Maa was an outright flop.

Even the two remakes that are currently being shot have been facing hurdles. Ram Gopal Varma’s Sholay and Victoria No 203 by Varma and Ananth Mahadevan have been going through serious casting issues with people dropping out of the films. Is there some jinx associated with the making of remakes?

“I don’t know whether it is a jinx,” says film maker Madhur Bhandarkar. “But films have to be remade if there is a potential for the story being accepted at that point of time.” Bhandarkar himself was planning a sequel to his film Chandni Bar but has put it on hold because he has apparently not found a good enough plot. “It is not a good idea to remake or do a sequel just to cash in on the publicity without having enough meat,” says Bhandarkar.

Remakes, of course, have their share of supporters. “I am not against the trend of remakes. It’s a good thing. But what one should keep in mind while making remakes is that there should be fresh characters too and it should be contemporarised,” says actress Preeti Jhangiani, who is acting in Victoria No 203, a remake of an earlier film starring Pran and Ashok Kumar.

Yet Feroz Khan’s biggie — the remake of Qurbani — is on the backburner. The film maker is in search of the right cast with Saif Ali Khan dropping out of the project. Tips is yet to get its remake of Amar Akbar Anthony going.

There seems to be a serious problem with remakes in Mumbai. Even the 2005 remake of Parineeta that won critical acclaim, did not make enough money for the producer. Not surprisingly, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who was to have remade Bajirao Mastani, is right now working on a new film, Saanwariya.

Some seem to believe that the problem is a Bollywood one. After all, the Hollywood remake of the James Bond classic, Casino Royale, released last year, has been the biggest Bond film to date. In Mumbai, on the other hand, makers have silently shelved their projects for remaking some old classics — Guide, Sahib, Biwi Aur Ghulam, Chaudhvin Ka Chand and Taj Mahal.

“I think we have to keep doing cinema that is different. That is why I am having a different remake of Sholay in my own style in the city,” says Ram Gopal Varma. “I am making this film in a way that I think I want it to be made in today’s context. For me it is a new film and not a remake,” says Varma. And that’s a shift, for Varma was saying something quite different when remakes were a fad. Varma himself said that his last release Shiva, which flopped again, was a remake of his earlier films — Shiva and James.

Audiences are getting bored and irritated now. I agree that sequels to Munnabhai MBBS (Lage Raho Munnabhai), Koi Mil Gaya (Krrish), Hera Pheri (Phir Hera Pheri) and Dhoom (Dhoom 2) have done really well. But this clearly says that film makers have run out of ideas and we are running out of audiences for such movies,” says Mumbai theatre owner Manoj Desai.

The success of the sequels, however, doesn’t necessarily mean good cinema. Most critics hold that, barring Lage Raho, the sequels did not have very good content. “Not many people knew what was happening in Phir Hera Pheri. Director Neeraj Vora was nowhere close to Priyadarshan who had made the original,” says an actor from the film.

But success has many fathers and everyone is in the race to produce and reproduce sequels. “We are working on the third of the Munnabhai series,” says Arshad Warsi. “It is a very good plot and Raju (director Rajkumar Hirani) is working on it,” adds Sanjay Dutt. Even Feroz Nadiadwala is producing the third film in the Hera Pheri series. “We have the same team but we will have new girls in the third version,” he adds.

So do the remakes indicate a dearth of new stories? “I believe stories in the world are very limited. One will always have to go back to the classics,” says Ahmed Siddiqui, who directed Jai Santoshi Maa. The remake didn’t work, he says, because there were too many remakes and the audience wasn’t prepared.

“However, I think a sequel serves the purpose better, since it has a new story and new characters. You have to give it a fresher twist,” he says. “It works.”

No wonder directors are still working on sequels. On the anvil are Hanuman Returns, Judwaa II, Tom, Dick and Harry in Bangkok and a sequel to Malaamal Weekly. And the latest announcement that could stun all is a sequel to the remake of Don! If remakes don’t work, make their sequels — that’s the new mantra.