This Mohanlal remake runs into rough weather

However enduring the efficacy of the theory may have been, that remakes are a safe business proposition in Indian cinema and that the reprised version is already piggy backing on the success of the original, there are exceptions that belie expectations. The 2001 release 'Adhipathi' is one such film which just could not translate into reality, the tremendous high that the Malayalam original 'Narasimham' achieved.

A star cast which had Mohan Babu and Nagarjuna, with the heroine roles essayed by Soundarya and Preeti Jhangiani had its helmsman in the form of director Raviraja Pinnisetty, who had given many thunderous hit films over the years in Telugu cinema. The Malayalam film, an action thriller was the right kind of fit for the director, who could have been expected to do justice to the typical socio- familial melodrama.

Somehow, the film did not work that well among the Telugu film viewers for whom the plotline and story would have been native enough, as it had everything which they would classify as masala entertainment. It just had a lukewarm response at best. To put it statistically, this was the second film of the Akkineni scion which was a remake release in 2001 which did not do as well as expected. Notably, 2001 was the only year in which Nagarjuna had five releases in the entire two decades of the new millennium.

Mohan Babu had a very successful stint in Telugu cinema not just as an actor who graduated from playing villain roles to that of hero but excelled as a producer too for nearly three decades by producing over 30 films. This Malayalam remake too was produced by him.

As far as the ladies were concerned, the striking beauty Soundarya was hailed as one of the beautiful pairs of Telugu cinema by the iconic producer D Ramanaidu who felt her pairing with his actor son Venkatesh was among the best, on the lines of NTR – Savitri, ANR- Vanisri, Chiranjeevi – Vijayashanti.

Since her debut in 1993, Soundarya had by then acted in around 70 films till 'Adhipathi' in 2001 and around 7-8 more before she died in a plane crash in 2004 when she was travelling from Karimnagar to Bengaluru for a political campaign. A multi-lingual actress she had paired with all the leading heroes in Telugu filmdom of that era apart from the top two –Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan in Tamil and Mohanlal in Malayalam.

The Kerala movie, released on January 26, 2000 is an evergreen favourite of Mohanlal fans, the hero of the film who had set a record of it being the highest grosser till that year in Malayalam cinema. It had a re-run in 2016 in Dubai, 15 years after its release to commemorate its massive success at the turn of the new millennium.

After a long break the Malayalam director Shaji Kailas who had shaped the original Malayalam film has made a comeback in the industry recently with ' Kaduva' starring Prithviraj Sukumaran in July. No such luck favoured the Telugu director, Raviraja Pinnisetty, who bowed out of active professional life around 15 years ago when his later releases, many of them remakes from Tamil did not make the cut.

Film: Adhipathi (2001)

Starring: Nagarjuna, Mohan Babu, Soundarya, Preeti Jhangiani

Remade from: Narasimham (2000)