Also: Shankar to sue Rajkumar Hirani for revealing the film’s story

Chennai/Mumbai: In a smart early-bird move, Bollywood star Salman Khan has snapped up the Hindi remake rights of Kollywod star Vijay’s new release Nanban.

With Nanban, set for release this Thursday, carrying good word-of-mouth reports, as it features Vijay, and is also directed by the biggie Shankar (known for his larger than life offerings like Robot and Sivaji), it was on the cards that somebody like Salman Khan would pick the rights for its Hindi remake.

For, Salman has tasted good success by remaking in Hindi the Tamil films of Vijay, whose films themselves have tasted good success after having been remade from other languages like Telugu and Malayalam. Salman’s Wanted was the retooling of Pokkiri while Kavalan was remade in Hindi as Bodyguard.

Sources close to Salman Khan say that the Bollywood hulk always eyes with interest any new release from Vijay, who has made name for himself in Tamil with the same kind of senseless films that Salman is so famous for in Hindi. ‘With Nanban enjoying so much good pre-release reports, it was only natural that Salman moved in quickly and walked away with its remake rights,’ the source added.

Salman’s filmi success over the years has been built by a simple commonsense formula: Buy the remake the rights of a Tamil or Malyalam hit. Remake it in Hindi with his signature touch, which is to somehow include a reprise of a Telugu hit song in it.

Now that he has got the Nanban’s remake rights, Salman is on the lookout for a Telugu dance number that will suit the mass sensibilities of his fans. Most likely, the screenplay will be tweaked in such a way that Salman, as a student in the film, will have a situation wherein he will shake a leg with his professor’s wife.

Asked won’t it be too much to have the professor’s spouse dance an ‘item number’ with a student, the source close to the actor calmly explained: ‘What’s there to be aghast about? There are many things in this world more bewildering than this, like the fact that this ‘sensuous item number’ will be actually performed by Malaika Arora, Salman’s real-life sister-in-law’.

The Salman Khan camp also categorically played down the fact that Nanban itself is the Tamil remake of the Aamir Khan’s splendid hit, Three Idiots. ‘What’s the big deal in that? Also, since when did the screenplay or the story become a factor in Salman’s movie?’ trenchantly asked the source close to Salman.

‘Anyway, there is a significant difference between Aamir and Salman’s movies. In that, Aamir, in his films, somehow has the solutions for all the problems that mankind faces. He is usually a character that seems a combination of Arundhathi Roy and Albert Einstein with the artistic acumen of Rembrandt and Mozart. Salman, on the other hand, is more straight-from-the-heart type. He provides solutions by totally destroying the problems. He is one man Atilla’s Horde,’ the source said.

Most likely the answer to the ills of our education system, which is the theme of Nanban/Three Idiots, will be uniquely Salman: He kills all the professors.

Meanwhile, in an interesting development, another Bollywood star Akshay Kumar has reportedly shown an interest to remake in Hindi the Telugu film Snehitudu, which too has been carrying good pre-release word, as it stars Vijay and is directed by Shankar.

Akshay Kumar’s camp said that the story, in the backdrop of life of engineering college students, has plenty of potential for a typical Akshay kind of role: As a civil engineer he can jump off from high-rise structures, as a mechanical engineer he can drive a tyre-less four-wheeler and as an aeronautical engineer he can fly on the wings of an aircraft

Snehitudu, for the record, is the Telugu dubbed version of Nanban.

Elsewhere, in a sensational development, the director of Nanban, Shankar, has sued Rajkumar Hirani, the director of Three Idiots, for revealing the story of the film.

Shankar, it should be noted here, is well known in the industry for keeping the plot of his films totally under wraps, sometimes even after his film’s release. For example, no one knows the story of his film Jeans, a full 14 years after its release.

It is, however, still not clear whether Shankar will also proceed to file a case against his music director Harris Jayaraj, who has not only revealed the tunes of Nanban but also all the films he is still to sign, in his very first film itself.

(Disclaimer: If Salman Khan’s Hindi remake of Nanban becomes a hit, you know what will happen? Yes, Simbu will remake the Hindi hit in Tamil).