Aamir Khan and Ajay Devgan were both so floored by Tamil hit Maharaja that both, independently of each other, evinced interest to acquire the film’s Hindi remaking rights. Ajay Devgan was very keen to bring the remake of the Vijay Sethupathi starrer before the Hindi film audience no sooner the original opened to a great public response in Tamil Nadu in June this year. Later, Aamir also evinced interest in remaking the much-loved film in Hindi.
Unfortunately, however, the producers, who had sold the streaming rights of the Tamil film to Netflix, could not prevail upon the OTT platform to refrain from dubbing it in Hindi. The streaming giant usually also acquires the dubbing rights in various Indian languages when it buys a film’s streaming rights. The producers tried to convince Netflix to relinquish the Hindi dubbing rights for a price but the platform turned down the proposal.
Of course, that does not mean that Aamir or Devgan or, for that matter, any other producer will never buy the Hindi remaking rights. There have been examples of the Hindi remake rights of South films being sold in spite of the Hindi dubbed version streaming on an OTT platform. But as far as Maharaja is concerned, only time will tell.
It may be mentioned here that the Hindi dubbed version of Maharaja was also released in the rest of India in June but, of course, the release was quite ‘half-hearted’ as it came to the cinemas with hardly any promotion. Needless to add, the dubbed version was a commercial flop.
