Veteran filmmaker Ramesh Sippy, celebrated for timeless classics like ‘Sholay’, ‘Seeta Aur Geeta’, and ‘Shakti’. Sippy’s iconic film ‘Sholay’ completed 50 years and it’s considered the biggest blockbuster in Hindi cinema. However, there are some of his movies which haven’t worked. The director once worked with a young Shah Rukh Khan in his 1995 film ‘Zamaana Deewana’. Though the film didn’t fare well at the box office, the director had spoken about how talented SRK is, when the film was being made and released. Sippy said in an interview with Lehren Retro, “There are a lot of great actors working currently, but I feel the star of my film, Shah Rukh Khan, has the most potential out of them all. But having said that, everyone working right now is doing good work,” the director remarked at the time.When asked if he thought Shah Rukh had it in him to become the next Amitabh Bachchan, Sippy responded with a mix of caution and foresight. “Shah Rukh definitely has immense acting range. However, to compare him with Amitabh so early in his career might not be fair to both him and as well Amitabh. But as I said, he has great potential, and who said he should be the next Amitabh? He should go on to become Shah Rukh Khan, and make his name so big that people go on to say that there should be an actor like Shah Rukh Khan. And I feel he never tried to be like Amitabh Bachchan and nor does he want to. He just wants to improve his own work and image. People might do this comparison because this boy is simply very talented and does everything very well, whether it is a dramatic scene, romantic scene, or an emotional scene, or be it song and dance. Whatever he does, he does with great conviction, and you get lost in that moment and you start liking it.”Though Zamaana Deewana couldn’t make its mark, Ramesh Sippy’s words turned out to be remarkably accurate. Shah Rukh Khan went on to carve out his own legacy, not as the “next Amitabh,” but as a global superstar in his own right, just as his director had envisioned.
