#MuchProud: Korean Cinema will ‘borrow’ from Bollywood for a change, by remaking ‘Kahaani’

After decades of Bollywood borrowing from the world, the brilliant people behind Korean cinema are showing their appreciation for Bollywood.

By: Tatsam Mukherjee |
January 8, 2018 7:42 pm

Bollywood has always been very generous about getting ‘inspired’ by other works, without even caring to attribute the original source. And it’s a proud moment for Bollywood, after it was announced that Kahaani is getting a Korean remake. It’s been coming for a while – after Anu Malik turned the theme music of one of the greatest movies ever made into Raja ko rani se pyaar ho gaya and the Bhatts made On The Waterfront into Ghulam, Silence of Lambs into Sangharsh and It Happened One Night into Dil Hai Ke Maanta Nahi.

KAHAANI now gets a Korean remake 🙂
..mubarak ho Begum Jaan @vidya_balan pic.twitter.com/qBHUtnJv6p

— sujoy ghosh (@sujoy_g) March 23, 2017

When they ran out of Hollywood films, they moved to South Korea. Sanjay Gupta remaking Oldboy into Zinda started off the first domino for Bollywood getting ‘inspired’ from Bollywood films. The Bhatts let Emraan Hashmi lord over movies like Murder 2, Awarapan, sporting a questionable hairdo – which were ‘copies’. More recently, Bollywood has been more open about their process of ‘remaking’ Korean movies.

With Ribhu Dasgupta turning Montage into TE3N, John Abraham played the nameless assassin in Rocky Handsome which was inspired from The Man From Nowhere. Mohit Suri ruined the terrific I Saw The Devil, and somehow thought he could replace Choi Min Sik’s spellbinding performance with Riteish Deshmukh’s making faces in Ek Villain.

And now in a queer turn of events, Sujoy Ghosh’s fantastic thriller Kahaani is being remade into a Korean movie. For the first time it looks like an ‘exchange’ is taking place between the two film industries. The 2012 film starring Vidya Balan and Parambrata Chatterjee, did something unimaginable- placing a murder mystery bang in the middle of Kolkata’s chaotic Durga Pujo.

ALSO READ: Why director Sujoy Ghosh isn’t too happy with Netflix’s description of Kahaani

ALSO READ: Why Vidya Balan’s ‘Kahaani 2’ is one of the best movies I have watched in recent past

With a champion central performance by Vidya Balan, and Ghosh’s frenetic direction, meant the film would salvage Ghosh’s career after two massive failures like Home Delivery and Aladin. It would also establish Balan as a leading lady who could solely deliver hits with ‘hero-like’ consistency.

As Sujoy Ghosh’s film begins its new chapter, it becomes the first Bollywood film to be remade into a Korean movie. The film is being remade by Kross Pictures’ Thomas Kim Hyunwoo, who helped Sujoy Ghosh’s TE3N in exchange for developing a Japanese series called The Devotion of Suspect X.

The same man also bankrolled Sanjay Gupta’s Jazbaa, and has hired OMG’s Umesh Shukla to remake the Korean movie Cell No. 7. Hyunwoo is exercising his privileges by borrowing from an Indian film for the first time, and given the stellar reputation that Korean movies enjoy on the world stage, it is surely a proud moment for the Bollywood fans.