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The Past Blast: When Salman Khan and E Nivas almost worked on a gangster drama, Goli inspired by Feroz Konkani
The films that never saw light of day. When Salman Khan was all gearing up to play the first negative lead of his career, and the plan was soon put on the backburner. But why? Read details
The 1990s and 2000s is easily among the most fascinating era of Hindi cinema, with multiple casting coups that failed to materialised. In 1999, E Nivas made his directorial debut with the Ram Gopal Verma production, Shool with Manoj Bajpayee in lead, which went ahead to win the National Film Award. Following the film’s release, E Nivas became a director to watch out for and every actor wanted to collaborated with him on a film. But what caught everyone’s attention was Salman Khan’s (known for romance, family drama's and comedies back in 1990s) willingness to collaborate with the “serious” and “artistic” director, who just made a debut with a “hard hitting film”.
After watching Shool at a special screening, Salman had multiple meetings with E Nivas, and at first was to collaborate with him on a film titled “Goli” which was to feature him as a larger-than-life gangster, who was an ace sharp shooter and also into manufacturing on bullets in Mumbai. The protagonist’s character was inspired by Feroz Konkani and had the film materialised, it would have been Salman’s first attempt at playing out and out negative character, though the filmmaker had added an emotional angle of the protagonist with his mother. The character of Salman would wear a locket made of bullet all through the film.
Multiple meetings took place between Salman, Sohail Khan, E Nivas and Ram Gopal Verma (who was to produce the film with Sohail), until one day, when E Nivas decided to not make the film at all. According to the grapevines, when the meeting of E Nivas reached advanced stage, Ram Gopal Verma expressed his will to direct Salman in a feature film and also had a script in place for the actor. However, Salman was committed to working with E Nivas, and hence, refused RGV’s direction offer.
When E Nivas got to know about RGV’s will to direct Salman, and the latter’s refusal, he decided to willingly take a step back as he didn’t want to disappoint his mentor, RGV, who gave him a chance in Bollywood. The film was eventually put in the cans and never saw the day of light since then. E Nivas and Salman came close to working together again Ateet, however, even that film was shelved for reasons best known to the stakeholders. Buzz is, the script of Ateet was then revamped into Tumko Na Bhool Payenge (2002).
From then, till date, Salman hasn’t visited the space that explores his dark side. Goli was the closest that he came to being a villain, but as they say, the rest is history. Stay tuned to the weekly column, The Past Blast every month, for more trivia’s on Pinkvilla.
ALSO READ: The Past Blast: When a crossover of Hera Pheri with Welcome was planned… And soon shelved
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