Bollywood Flashback: Why Did The Powerful Association of Aamir-Sunny Deol-RajKumar Santhoshi Go Kaput?

The release of Sunny Deol’s Ghayal Once Again refreshed the memories of his two and half decade old film Ghayal which was a debut directorial venture for Rajkumar Santoshi. This movie fetched Sunny Deol, his first National award and also managed to finally establish his image as an action hero. Followed by this the actor-director duo enhanced their lethal combination in films like Damini & Ghatak. Sadly, after the hat-trick of these power packed films, the combination never worked together. There were many stories and speculations behind the fall of this powerful combination. Here’s one of them.

Rajkumar Santoshi began his career working as an assistant director with Govind Nihalani for the movies Ardh Satya &  Vijeta. He struggled for long years, without getting the kind of break he was looking for until, Sunny Deol took him under his wings. Together, they made Ghayal, which enhanced the level of action films in our country. The movie not only did well, but also earned Sunny, a National award. The success of Ghayal encouraged Rajkumar Santoshi and he immediately started two small projects Andaz Apna Apna (with Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Raveena Tandon and Karisma Kapoor) along with Damini (with Rishi Kapoor, Meenakshi Sheshadri and Sunny Deol in special appearance).

Sunny got the financial backing for Damini with the help of the Moranis of Cineyug banner. On the other hand Rajkumar Santoshi built up a rapport with Aamir Khan and the two, became firm friends. As a gesture, Aamir even did a guest appearance for a song in Damini. Aamir and Sunny were like two pillars of trust and confidence for Rajkumar Santoshi due to which he was openly partial to these two. He gave the best dialogues, scenes and build-up to Sunny’s special appearance in Damini and sidelined the hero of the film, Rishi Kapoor, in the second half of the film.  Similarly, he added more scenes of Aamir Khan (In AAA) and also got Juhi Chawla and Govinda to do a sequence with Aamir in the film. It is said that many of Salman Khan’s scenes were also reduced. Despite all this, Santoshi escaped the blame game as Salman blamed Aamir for his interference and Rishi thought that Sunny must’ve influenced the makers. Both these films took years in the making, but Santoshi was stress free as he had already planned his next few films with both these heroes and also had his home production Ghatak on floor (with Sunny Deol).

Rajkumar Santoshi started working on the scripts of individual films with Sunny and Aamir. It is said that he planned a Sunny-Bobby starrer film, but later shelved it and moved on to write a hard-hitting film with the action hero. Similarly, he was planning to make an entertainer with Aamir and his brother Faizal. Meanwhile, Ghatak got delayed due to which he went into a huge financial crisis.  At this juncture, the Boney-Anil Kapoor combo came in Santoshi’s life.

Anil Kapoor’s career was going through a rough phase and that’s why the Kapoor brother approached Santoshi with their horsebacks laden with gold and that was exactly what Santoshi needed in order to survive his financial mess. Santoshi informed his friends Sunny and Aamir about this offer. They resented it and offered financial help from their side only over a promise of starting films with them once he finishes Ghatak. Sunny also offered him Barsaat which was frozen due to his differences with director Shekhar Kapur. Things started sailing smoothly for a while until the Kapoors offered Santoshi an unheard signing amount and Santoshi was tempted this time as they had roped in Madhuri Dixit for this movie.

Santoshi signed this movie and the Kapoors decided to launch the film after a few months on an auspicious occasion. Though the whole deal was formalized Santoshi knew how his closest friends would react and thus he didn’t tell them. But as these things never remain under the wraps for long, Aamir came to know about this and he felt betrayed and immediately backed out of his project with Santoshi and asked Dharmesh Darshan to take over as director. This was bad enough, but worse was in store for Santoshi when Sunny heard about this from outsiders.

Sunny felt devastated over the fact that his friend took him for granted and chose the Kapoors over him. He stopped discussing about the film and met Santoshi only over Ghatak. He handed the production matters of Barsaat to Dharmendra and hoped that the news of Santoshi’s association with the Kapoors turn out to be just another B-towns gossip. Santoshi kept assuring the press that Sunny and Aamir will be doing one film each under his home production and ignored these speculations as mere gossip. Sadly, this gossip turned into a reality in the form of Pukar starring Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit in the lead role.

We don’t know what happened to those films Rajkumar Santoshi was planning to launch under his home production with Sunny and Aamir, but after this whole controversy, one never got to see these actors working again with this award winning director. If only they would have worked together, there were chances of Sunny winning more awards and Aamir giving us path breaking films.

Fun Facts –

Rajkumar Santoshi had planned to rope in Shahrukh Khan with Aamir Khan for his home production and also had photo shoots for the same.

Aamir Khan and Faisal Khan did ‘Mela’ with Dharmesh Darshan.

Rajkumar Santoshi’s The Legend of Bhagat Singh and Sunny Deol’s 23 March 1931: Shaheed released on the same day – 7^th June 2002. Both these films, were based on the life and happenings of Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and his companions.

Rajkumar Santoshi had planned to make a futuristic action film with Sunny Deol at the time of Ghayal but the idea did not conceptualize due to the mammoth budget associated with it.

Pukar also took a lot of time in the making, but fetched Anil Kapoor a National award.

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