Ramesh Sippy says Amitabh Bachchan’s stardom affected Shakti’s performance in theaters: ‘People didn’t get satisfaction of…’

Ramesh Sippy pulled the biggest casting coup in 1982 as he got Bollywood's biggest stars Amitabh Bachchan and Dilip Kumar together on the screen in his film Shakti. However, the movie couldn't perform well at the box office.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | July 7, 2023 06:36 PM IST

3 min read

Dilip Kumar, Ramesh Sippy and Amitabh Bachchan. (Express archive photo)

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After delivering a superhit in Sholay (1975), filmmaker Ramesh Sippy collaborated with Amitabh Bachchan and writer duo Salim-Javed again for his 1982 film Shakti. With the movie, Sippy pulled the biggest casting coup as he got Bollywood’s biggest stars Bachchan and Dilip Kumar together on the screen. However, Shakti did not receive a great response from the audience upon its release as Bachchan’s superstardom was at its peak at the time and his fans missed watching him dance and doing everything for which they loved him.

Sippy, in a recent interview with Lallantop, shared, “I knew it would be a great father-son story and above that I knew with Amitabh Bachchan and Dilip Kumar, this film would become something else altogether. Nobody could make this combination, before or after this film.” But still the film couldn’t perform well.

The filmmaker reasoned, “By the time Shakti released, Bachchan sahab became an institution. He would do everything in the film — from dancing, singing, fighting to romancing. So, it was a one man performance. When Shakti came, it felt like people got disappointed. The front bencher audience didn’t get that satisfaction. But a film’s story has some limitations.”

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Ramesh Sippy said that though he and his team thought that Shakti looks “dry” without any dance or song sequence, they still decided against keeping any. “After some discussion, we decided against it. Iski purity rehni chahiye, varna ye Shakti nahi hogi (The film’s purity should stay, else it won’t be Shakti.) We decided we will not compromise,” Sippy said.

At the mahurat of Shakti, Big B stole all the attention as he arrived in a helicopter. Through the actor’s grand entry, the makers wanted to establish the dynamics of the father-son relationship which was shown in Shakti. “It was a good start as people got to know that there will be something like clash of giants. But since dance and song were not there in the film, maybe people felt that void,” shared Sippy.

Besides Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan, Shakti also starred Rakhee Gulzar, Smita Patil, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Amrish Puri.

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