‘Sippys wanted Jackie Chan for Sholay 2’: Ram Gopal Varma recalls origins of Aag, reveals it would have pitted Gabbar and Veeru’s sons against each other

He said, “No one said that (it was a bad idea). Bachchan is there, Ajay Devgn is there, Sushmita Sen is there, no one had a problem with the content. What happened is, halfway through, we got into a lot of legal issues, with the Sippys claiming that we cannot use the story, and the last thing that was on anybody’s mind was the film. I’m not trying to push the blame on something else.”

RGV said that his initial idea for the film was very different, and recalled a story about being approached by Sascha Sippy for a Sholay sequel. He said, “He had an idea. Lot of actors died in the original film, and some actors also died, like Sanjeev Kumar and Amjad Khan… So, his story was that Helen had the child of Gabbar after ‘Mehbooba o Mehbooba’, and Dharam ji and Hema ji have a son, so that was one more hero we got. And Jaya ji is also alive. Something he concocted. He also said, ‘We’ll make a character for Jackie Chan’.”

RGV initially thought that he was talking about somebody else. But Sascha Sippy said that because Sholay is such a popular brand across Asia, and Jackie Chan is the biggest star in Asia, ‘the combination’ of these two factors would capture the Chinese market. “So we had to figure out a way to get Jackie Chan in Sholay 2,” RGV said with a laugh, adding that he quietly left the meeting, but it got him thinking about another way to tackle Sholay.

Aag remains one of the most reviled films in history. It currently has a 1.4/10 rating on the site IMDb, and was drew negligible attention at the box office. The film also starred Malayalam star Mohanlal. Jackie Chan went on to work with Indian actors Sonu Sood and Disha Patani in the 2017 film Kung Fu Yoga.