Amitabh Bachchan wasn’t Ram Gopal Varma’s first choice for Sarkar, reveals director: ‘Had to shelve the original after the arrest of…’

One of the most influential filmmakers of Indian cinema since the 1990s, Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) has made successful films across many languages and in the 1990s, when he was starting to make films in the Hindi language, he had planned to make Sarkar. But, at that time, the film had a different title and a completely different cast.

In a recent interview, RGV shared that Sarkar, which was inspired by The Godfather, was to be made as Nayak in 1993 but was shelved. The film was eventually made in 2005 with Amitabh Bachchan and Abhishek Bachchan in key roles. RGV recalled that he titled the original film Nayak, and was to star Naseeruddin Shah and Sanjay Dutt. The director revealed that after Dutt was arrested in the 1993 bomb blast case, the film had to be shut down. Interestingly, it was right around this time that Dutt had starred in a film called Khalnayak where he played the titular character.

“He got arrested while I was making a film called Nayak. While waiting for him to be released, I made the action comedy Anaganaga Oka Roju (1996) in Telugu, which became a super hit. Since that film was successful, when Sanjay Dutt came out, we decided to make an action comedy instead of a political film. Thus, I made Daud (1997), which didn’t work at the box office,” he said during a chat with Pinkvilla.

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Daud featured Sanjay Dutt, Urmila Matondkar and Paresh Rawal in key roles. “I made Daud only because Anaganaga Oka Roju worked. Thus, Nayak was shelved. Sanju was supposed to play Abhishek’s role and Naseeruddin Shah was to portray Amitabh Bachchan’s character. Years later, I finally made it as Sarkar,” he added. The movie later received two sequels, Sarkar Raj (2008) and Sarkar 3 (2017).