Are Chamkila's Biopics Jinxed?? Here's Our Point Of View, What's Yours?
We all are well aware of Amar Singh Chamkila, a popular singer, lyricist and music composer of the 80s era, mostly panned for his controversial songs. New age singers are using his compositions and even using his name in the middle of their songs to gain popularity. There have been many attempts to bring Chamkila alive on celluloid, but none of the projects could see the light of day.
The very first attempt was made by Hindi Film Director Anurag Kashyap, Kunal Kapoor and Navdeep Singh in the year 2009. This project was titled Chamkila. The trio did a lot of research on Chamkila and Kunal himself got involved in script writing to understand the character. Their research took a lot of time and for the lead one out of the three actresses namely Huma Qureshi,Richa Chadda & Surveen Chawla, was being considered.
.Amit Trivedi even recorded some songs for the film but then Anurag got busy with other assignments and Chamkila could not go beyond being just an announcement. Kunal Kapoor was very upset with this film being shelved.
Next attempt was in our own Punjabi Film Industry. Deepa Rai, a UK based singer started the film on Chamkila's life and it was titled Chamkila-The Legend.
Many big wigs including Dharmendra were supposed to do this film. Though senior artists like Daljit Kaur, Nirmal Rishi, Surinder Shinda beside others had even shot for the film. Gurleen Kaur (also working in The Black Prince) and Poonam Sood played Amarjot and Chamkila's wife's characters. The film that started in 2012, and is said to be complete, still awaits release.
Another one is docudrama Mehsampur, the trailer of which is already out. But the makers are yet to shoot some crucial parts of the film. They are trying to raise funds to complete this one of kind concept, based on the late singer's life.
Sometime back there was buzz in industry that Babbu Mann will play Chamkila in Mushtaq Pasha's next. At that time Chamkila's family objected that makers did not approach them for approval. Now it seems that the project has been shelved and the same team is working on a another film but with a different subject.
Short Film Wand & Once Upon A Time In Amritsar fame Gurjind Mann too made an announcement about a film based on the legendary singer. But now he is busy with another interesting film called Punjab Singh.
Late Chamkila is widely listened to and discussed on online platforms, and it will be wonderful to see his life story on big screen.
But seems like some jinx is related to the biopics that are been considered on his life!
None of the films based on him could release theatrically. (Scary)
