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Shah Rukh Khan rejected 20 films including projects from Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Salman Khan, Ali Abbas Zafar, Madhur Bhandarkar

Shahrukh Khan

The King Khan of Bollywood has been very careful while choosing any script ever since the release of ‘Zero’. The actor who had been very prudent in projects, has read over 50 scripts, showed interest in 20 and finally zeroed in on 4. Siddarth Anand’s actioner Pathan , Rajkumar Hirani’s much anticipated social comedy, Atlee’s commercial actioner and Raj and DK’s quirky action-comedy.

After Zero , SRK was ready to start the Rakesh Sharma biopic, Salute, however just few months before taking the film on floors, he backed out of it as he didn’t want to involve into another film set against the backdrop of space after the failure of Zero. Soon after, the superstar was looking for action scripts, Madhur Bhandarkar went to him with a desi action film titled ‘Inspector Ghalib’. While SRK liked the concept as well as the character, he wasn’t too sure if Bhandarkar, who is known for realistic cinema, would be able to do justice in presenting him as a larger than life action hero.

Soon after, Sanjay Leela Bhansali offered SRK with the Sahir Ludhianvi biopic, but the superstar felt, it’s “too serious and risky” for him to do a biopic on the poet at this point of time and is rather looking for something in more “commercial” side. The deal fell through and that’s when his friend, Salman Khan offered him a film.

According to sources, Salman went to SRK with the script of ‘Guns of North’ offering him to play the part of a cop to Aayush Sharma’s gangster. Of course, SRK humbly refused to act in the film, as the story was not focused around his character, and he was looking to do a relatively bigger film at that point of time. “Back then, the cop was more of an extended cameo, and that’s definitely not what SRK was looking for.”

No later after that, Ali Abbas Zafar went to SRK with the remake of Mr. India, and the discussions were in very advanced stages. However, Shah Rukh was in two minds if doing an out and out negative character, would be a right idea at this stage of his career, given the fact that the screen time of the villain was far lesser than the lead role of Mr . India. “Why would SRK be a part of the film that has someone else play Mr. India? It’s an obvious decision to back off. He wanted to do a solo action film with Ali and that might happen in the future,” a source stated.
“If he is being so careful and cautious, imagine the power and quality of the stories that have excited him. There is no doubt that all his four films will set the box-office on fire like never before, and he will be back to fight for the top spot,” the source confidently said. Here we wait for the man to make big announcements of all his upcoming films starting with Pathan on September 27, which is on Yash Chopra’s birthday.

Atharva Karnik

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