Today, SRK’s first production venture under his production banner RED CHILLIES ENTERTAINMENT and the first directorial venture of his close friend Farah Khan, titled Main Hoon Na, celebrates two decades of its release. Main Hoon Na was one of SRK’s first films I saw in the theatre and also one I watched multiple times on an original DVD since before that, it was usually going to the theatre or watching movies on a pirated VCD. Main Hoon Na got set against the backdrop of the Indo-Pak conflict, with Suniel Shetty’s character Raghavan, a disgruntled ex-officer, wanting to stop a prisoner exchange program between India and Pakistan called Project Milaap. Suniel Shetty played an antagonist in an SRK film for the first time and shared screen space with the Badshah of Bollywood for the first time. The film also starred ‘Greek God’ Hrithik Roshan’s former brother-in-law, Zayed Khan, alongside Sushmita Sen and Amrita Rao. Main Hoon Na had references to the Ramayana since SRK’s character name was Ram, Zayed Khan’s was Laxman, and Suniel Shetty’s was Raghavan, as mentioned above. Farah Khan planned to make the film in 2000, but it got delayed due to SRK’s back injury and prior commitments, leading Zayed Khan and Amrita Rao, who were to debut with this movie, to start working in films. Main Hoon Na also had a host of supporting actors, including BJP MP Kirron Kher, who played the over-the-top Bengali mother of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s adaptation of the late Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Bengali novel Devdas. Main Hoon Na had music by Anu Malik, lyrics by Javed Akhtar, and songs sung by Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal, Abhijeet, Sunidhi Chauhan, the versatile singer KK, Anu Malik, Vasundhara Das, and Alka Yagnik. The film also had an end credit song featuring the cast and crew members, and a YouTube channel called ONLY DESI deciphered what’s got written in the newspaper featuring Suniel Shetty’s photo as Raghavan in the song, after which the discovery went viral. Main Hoon Na was one of the three successful collaborations between Farah Khan as a director and SRK as an actor-producer, after which Main Hoon Na got remade in Tamil as Aegan. After Main Hoon Na, SRK starred in another cross-border love story titled VEER-ZAARA, which was his second last collaboration with Yash Chopra. Despite the clash on Diwali with director duo Abbas-Mustan’s AITRAAZ, Ram Gopal Varma’s (RGV) Naach, and the release of the color version of K. Asif’s MUGHAL-E-AZAM, VEER-ZAARA turned out to be a success. However, SRK couldn’t get a hattrick of hits in 2004, as his third release of the year, Swades, didn’t have the quintessential SRK and directly spoke about the problems faced by India’s hinterland, leading it to become a flop but gaining cult status over the years. Similarly, last year, after making a comeback on the big screen and giving two all-time blockbuster hits with PATHAAN and JAWAN, also co-produced by SRK, SRK got an average grosser at the end of the year in the form of DUNKI, his maiden collaboration with Rajkumar Hirani, who also co-produced the film. He is now working on a film tentatively titled King, which will star his only daughter, Suhana, as the parallel lead and will mark the return of Sujoy Ghosh to the big screen
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