Whatever happened to originality, asks Meena Iyer

Meena Iyer | TNN (TIMES LIFE; April 24, 2011) BLAME it on inertia; or blame it on the compulsions of commerce. Just the fact that 27 sequels of good, bad and indifferent Hollywood and Bollywood franchises will play at a theatre near you in the coming seven months, tells a story by itself. While Bollywood sets the sequel ball rolling with Indra Kumar’s Double Dhamaal in June, followed by Mukesh Bhatt’s Murder-2 in July, Sagar Bellary’s Bheja Fry 2, and the biggest one Shah Rukh Khan’s Don-2 on Christmas; Hollywood is going to beat the Hindi film industry hollow because they start with the shriek feast Scream 4, followed by West is West, a sequel to Om Puri’s East is East and then go into Fast Five, Pirates Of The Caribbean 4 (3D /IMAX 3D), The Hangover 2, Kung Fu Panda 2, X-Men: First Class, Cars (2D & 3D), Transformers 3 (3D), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2), Paranormal Activity 3, Happy Feet 2 (3D),Mission Impossible 4 that has our very own Anil Kapoor teaming up with Tom Cruise.

Why this sudden sequel traffic jam? “Paucity of original ideas,” says trade analyst Amod Mehra. “Honestly, Bollywood has been facing a brain drain for the longest time. We have nothing like ‘original’ left within our films. We have either been remaking regional films or stealing from foreign ones, or worse, revisiting our own past cinema.” Another producer cringes as he insists it’s lack of More >