Do You Know How Ramesh Sippy Got Dilip Kumar To Get Him To Sign For His Film When He Had Signed For Another Film Called Sanyas?

After the two successful hits like Seeta Aur Geeta and Sholay, Ramesh Sippy’s film Shaan did badly in the box office and didn’t do too well. So He was very keen to make a film that will be successful with good star cast and a good script.  A film that would not only do commercially well but also win the critic’s appreciation.

After a lot of research Salim Javed shared the script of the film Shakti which is a remake of the Tamil Film, Thanga Pathakkam. In the Tamil film Shivaji Ganeshan had a powerful role.  Salim Javed had suggested Dilip Kumar’s name to play the role of Shivaji Ganeshan. He was keen to cast Amitabh Bachchan in the role of his son . Both roles were to be pivotal and protagonist.   In this way Sippy bought the rights of the Tamil film to recreate the Hindi film version.  

He first approached Amitabh Bachchan for the role of the son . The actor had liked the script and he wanted to know who would be playing the role of the father. When Ramesh Sippy told him it would be played by Dilip Kumar his happiness knew no bounds and he jumped with joy, as he was very eager to work with Dilip Kumar and it with was his wish to work with the senior actor .  He was pleased that Amitabh Bachchan had readily agreed and that the combination of both the stars, it would be a great onscreen presence.  Salim Javed wrote the script with a few changes to make the father-son duo a strong combination in the film.

Dilip Kumar had already given dates for film Sanyas but Sippy had got him to agree to sign the film Shakti .Sippy was confident that Dilip Kumar would agree to work with him as they were close friends and true to this, he read out the script to Dilip Kumar and the actor had immediately agreed to play the father’s role.  When he heard the son’s role is to be played by Amitabh Bachchan, he was very happy and he was ready to sign for the film giving Sippy his dates.

When the film released the film did extremely well .  Dilip Kumar got the Best Actor Award but Amitabh Bachchan also received lot of recognition for his role as the powerful adamant son .   Both the stars got lot of fame an adulation with their respective roles in the film .  The famous Bollywood film critic Khalid Mohammed in his review stated there are no words to express on the performance by Dilip Kumar and that’s not all he was all praises for Amitabh Bachchan’s role in the film expressing that he is a great actor.