Last week I had the GENIUS realization that Dear Zindagi is clearly a sequel to Josh, in which Shahrukh’s bad-boy biker had gone through intensive therapy to resolve his anger issues, and ended up becoming a therapist himself. From some of the comments, it sounds like I am not the only person who plays around with the idea of what would be the best possible sequel-continuation of a certain story. Feel free to share your own ideas in the comments, and read the post if you want to know mine!
First, a film that probably maybe hopefully will actually get made at some point in the distant future, Don III:
Since both Om Puri and Priyanka are no longer available, let’s focus on the one relationship that is left from the original, Shahrukh and Boman Irani! Boman kills Priyanka and Om in the first 5 minutes through an elaborate fancy scheme. Shahrukh, in peaceful retirement with his vast wealth from the last heist, is informed. He realizes that Boman never got over being tricked in Don I and has just been biding his time for revenge all along, finally taking away the one thing he knows Shahrukh truly cares about, Priyanka. And also Om Puri, because Om is dead for real so his character can’t come back, although I kind of would have liked to see Om’s honest cop and Don team up to avenge Priyanka.
Instead, it is Don alone who tries to finally bring down Boman. Maybe with some conversations or flashbacks to fill in all the things that made Don-Don (was he a youthful pickpocket picked up and trained as a loyal second in command by his boss who he seemed to hate? Did he have his own gang all along and was only an outside contractor until he took over the bigger group?). To succeed in his plan, he puts together a team of Boman’s innocent victims to help him. He defeats Boman and then in a surprise twist, gives all the wealth to the innocent victims and walks away. In an epilogue scene, we see him living as street performer in Bombay, thereby completing the circle and turning from Don back into Vijay.
(huh? huh? Brilliant, right?)
Then, a movie which is much less likely to be made in the future, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai 2: Rise of Little Anjali:
Now, theoretically, Little Anjali herself could play this role. But although I like her a lot better as an adult actress than as a child actress, I still don’t want her to be a heroine. Instead, how about Little Anjali’s Student of the Year co-star Alia Bhatt?
(Boy, SRK has really changed in the past 18 years too, hasn’t he?)
Now, I kind of had a theory when watching KKHH that Little Anjali would grow up to marry Salman. But I was told that this theory was GROSS GROSS GROSS, so I stopped sharing it. I still think it would have worked if K2H2:2 had been made a few years back. But right now, I do agree, Salman would look much much too old opposite Alia Bhatt. So instead, let’s Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania this sucker and re-imagine it for a new age!
Little Anjali Alia Bhatt goes off to the same college where her parents met, with her grandfather still serving as principal. Because he is principal (and also this school has a long history of terrible student supervision), Alia is allowed to run wild, staying out late, dating boys, doing dangerous stunts, having a wonderful time. The only person who can really reign her in is sweet sensitive Varun, her best friend. Just as Varun starts to wake up to the idea that he might love Alia “that way”, a new student arrives on campus, macho cool guy Arjun Kapoor. Alia is immediately taken by his rough demeanor and fearless attitude and doesn’t notice that Varun is trying to change their relationship into a romance. In the end, Alia confesses her love for Arjun to Varun just as Varun is about to admit his own feelings for her. Varun hides his pain within his heart and goes away to join the army.
(I know Arjun has more of a feminine vibe, but I like Varun and Alia together better. So let’s make Arjun the gender-normative one in the first half, so Varun can really “win” in the end)
4 years later, Arjun has died doing something macho (street fighting? drag racing? stuntman?). Alia has matured and lives with her grandmother Farida Jalal while her parents are overseas somewhere (put SRKajol in for more than a cameo, and the whole movie would end up being about them). A year after Arjun’s death, his last letter is delivered to her, in which he tells her that Varun loved her all along, she just didn’t see it, and in fact Arjun had come between their love story. Alia rejects this idea (one life, one heart, one love!), but Farida sneakily signs her up for an adventure camp, where Varun works now, putting bored housewives and office workers through an imaginary bootcamp. They rediscover their old friendship, etc. etc. But! Alia does not know (although the audience does) that Varun is engaged to Ileana D’Cruz (why not?). After they finally come together and Varun has the woman he loves in his arms, he glances down and notices his engagement ring, thunder thunder!!!
(They seem good together, right? You can see them as a couple? But not as good a couple as Varun and Alia)
Finally, in the end, with the encouragement through phone cameo of her parents, Alia goes to break up Varun’s wedding and confess her feelings. Varun is still conflicted, after all he made a promise. But as he is preparing to leave on the white horse, his older brother senses his internal conflict and drags him to the horse only, in the end, to pull it over to Alia while he gives a big speech about how although it is his dream to marry Varun to Ileana, Varun himself wants something else. And who plays Varun’s big brother who gives this big speech? Yes, that’s right!!! SALMAN KHAN!!!!
(I still think they make a cute couple, and if The World won’t let me put them together, at least she can move into his house as a sister-in-law. Shut up, you’re the creepy one!)
And finally, a recent one that is just crying out for a happier ending, Ae Dil Hai Mushkilier: Ayan’s Story:
The ending part of ADHM kind of reminded me of Love Story in some ways, so why not complete the parallel and make an Oliver’s Story option?
(Obviously the better sequel to Love Story would be if we followed the most interesting sexiest character of the original, Ray Milland. Way way cooler than his stupid spoiled brat boomer son!)
We pick up right at the end, Ayan leaves his interview, caught up in his memories. He gets a phone call from his father, who asks him to come home. His father is dying! Which lets us explore the new territory of all the family stuff that the original film carefully ignored.
Ranbir is sad over his father’s death, especially as they finally become close towards the end. After their conversations about why his parent’s marriage broke up, in his grief, Ranbir is inspired to track down his mother. He finds her, living in an idyllic small hill station, only to learn that she is also dying. He manages to build a relationship with her before the end, and learns more about what happened in his parent’s relationship to make it fall apart. It came apart because they rushed into it and loved each other too much but never really respected or understood each other. Helping Ranbir to understand all these concepts is the young woman who lives with and cares for his mother, her friend’s daughter who calls her “auntie”, Sonam.
(Do I even need to say that Ranbir’s real life parents play his onscreen parents? Or did we all just take that as a given?)
In the end, after his mother dies, Ranbir proposes to Sonam. But she has her pride and says that although she has grown to care for him deeply, she can’t just be a substitute for the woman he can never forget, or someone to give him back the family he lost. Ranbir goes away and starts traveling again, randomly bumping into Aishwarya. Who is now happily re-married to Abhishek (obviously). They talk, and he learns that while Abhishek fell in love with her, she resisted at first. But finally realized there are many different kinds of love, and what she felt for him was different but just as strong as what she had felt for Ranbir and SRK. With this idea in mind, Ranbir rushes back to the hill station, only to learn that Sonam is about to marry someone else. He breaks into her room and gives her an impassioned speech about how she wants something he can’t give, his love for Anushka will always be there, but he has something else to offer her which is even better.
And then it turns out he mis-understood what he had heard, there is a wedding in the house, but it isn’t Sonam getting married, she is just helping the bride get ready. And he and Sonam decide to marry and live in his mother’s house and have the kind of marriage he didn’t know he wanted but knows he needs.
(Do I want Ranbir to go through this same journey in real life and end up back with Sonam? Yes, I kind of do.)
dontcallitbollywood 
My personal pretend sequel to KKHH has Salman ending up with Reema Lagoo. He spends all his time with her, he’s older than Kajol, Reema is still young and vibrant… It’s like The Graduate but in reverse.
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And then he becomes Kajol’s stepfather? I don’t know, seems weird.
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I always thought little Anjali would end up with Salman too. It’s not creepy or weird. It was just the way the vibes worked. The diff in ages was about 20yrs (maybe 25)– it works for me
I don’t want to see it though– but I would love to read it
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I was going for Salman (the character, not the person) being maybe even a little younger than Kajol. So the difference could have been as small as 18 or 16 years. Which was helped along because Salman could have easily passed for 24 or 26, even though in real life he was already over 30.
If I could make my imaginary KKHH2 back say ten years ago, when Little Anjali would have been 18 and Salman would have been 36 (and 40 in real life but easily looking younger), then maybe. But today Salman looks solidly too old for Alia Bhatt or anyone else who could play Little Anjali.
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I love your sequel to KKHH! But I still think that Alia needs to have a son that is craving a male/father figure type person in his life. We could probably get AbRam to play her son assuming he’s old enough when this is made. Plus Varun could be a nerd in college who turns into a cooler person who works at a sports camp which AbRam attends. Also why can’t Arjun be replaced by Sidharth and make this a total Student of the Year reunion!
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I don’t know, I kind of want a really good actor and strong presence in the Dead Spouse role, like Rani was in the original. So you understand how our hero/heroine could fall in love with them. Oh, and for the same reason, I would want really good chemistry between them. I like Arjun, and I liked Alia and Arjun in 2 States, so I am leaning that way.
I will, however, allow for a sports camp and a son craving a male.father figure. But I still want Varun’s “real job” to be something super macho like army commando, so it can be the gender flip of Kajol showing up in the second half all saris and long hair and stuff. Especially if we have a scene in the first half where Varun tries to be manly and fails! Ooo! Maybe a cop!
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Good point about the strong actor and good chemistry. I liked Arjun and Alia in 2 States too! I saw Finding Fanny yesterday and Arjun really impressed me. I don’t think he has much range but I think he’s a good actor in the roles that fit him.
Yes, Varun should be a cop!
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And his intro could be him putting on a full uniform while Alia talks about how sensitive and sweet he is! Just like Kajol putting on make-up and jewelry while Shahrukh talks about what a tomboy she was.
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perfect!
Also Alia should be an overprotective mom that doesn’t want her son to play competitive sports which is why her son sneaks off to sports camp. And even though Varun is the father figure that he’s never had, Alia’s son should have a rivalry with Varun for Alia’s attention once she shows up to the camp. Not like in the original where little Anjali tries to get her dad together with Kajol.
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Oh I like that! Only, what about making it a rivalry for Varun’s attention? If Alia is the one who gets the letter this time (or again, I guess? If she is Little Anjali grown up), maybe she is trying to track down Varun when she learns that her son has run away, goes to camp all set to yell at the mean horrible camp director, only to see that it is Varun and immediately change into a weak blithering woman. And then Farida has to set up a basketball competition, so Alia can get her spunk back (re-do the sexy sari slip with her yanking Varun’s shirt off instead). And then she stays at camp and her little boy gets jealous that he has to share his best friend camp counselor with his mother. Until he has a conversation with Varun about Dead Arjun, and starts to see Varun more as a father-figure than as a buddy.
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Great! Now that we have the storyline set up all we need to do is convince Karan and Shashank Khaitan 🙂
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This was such fun to read!
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It was super fun to write too!
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Can we crowd-fund KKHH2 and find a producer etc..? Ha ha
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Hey, it could happen for real! Now that Humpty was so smartly made, and is becoming a franchise, why not do the same thing for KKHH that they did for DDLJ?
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Wonderful! Now, please pitch these ideas to KJo and crew.. 🙂
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Wait, now I’m feeling bad about the K2H22 story. Anjali can’t have everyone she loves die! Is there some other way for the romance to fall apart without yet another death?
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No, I’m sorry, Arjun has to die. It’s death or divorce, and Aaje Nachle proved that divorce doesn’t work in a Hindi film. At least, non-tragic divorce. But I don’t want to make her the survivor of a terrible marriage either!
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Can’t he be child-married to someone else? Become a priest? Something? What if it’s his mother’s dying wish that he marry someone else? Plus, with that approach, his story could be KKHH3…
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MAYBE the third option. Varun nobly leaves town while they are happy and engaged, but before they can elope, Arjun gets a telegram from home that he has to marry someone else for some reason (pregnant with brother’s baby?) and Alia gives up on love. But still have her child with Arjun and lives as a sacrificing single mother. Until she gets a letter from Arjun, in which he apologizes for leaving her, explained what happened, that he now loves his wife and is happy, and wants her to be happy too and she should track down Varun because they were always meant to be together.
Oh! And then his daughter/niece can be at the adventure camp with Alia’s son! And THERE’S your KKHH3!
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Hmmm. But then Arjun abandons his own baby? That’s no good. How about Alia and Arjun were engaged, but then her even-wilder best friend and her boyfriend die in a motorcycle accident but the baby lives and she makes a deathbed promise to raise it? And Arjun has some family oath about adopted children or something so they have to break up? Happy baby montage with Alia and Faridabad like in Dil Aashna Hai brings us to present day, son goes to camp, etc.
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Wait, the niece and the son romance? But aren’t they cousins?
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Okay, it’s not Arjun’s brother’s son, it’s Arjun’s best friend’s son. And Arjun never knew about the baby, Alia never had a chance to tell him. Or else she knows about the whole situation and chooses not to tell Arjun so he can marry the other girl. Oh! I have it! She bumps into the other girl at a pre-natal visit, knows the other girl is an orphan with no support and no education but really wants the baby and is excited to marry her boyfriend. So Alia chooses to let Arjun marry her when she discovers that the boyfriend was also Arjun’s best friend. Because Alia knows that she has Farida Jalal and an education and all this other stuff to help her raise AbRam (I’m going with the AbRam casting suggestion) but the other girl has nothing.
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Is there Bollywood Fan fiction? Because you need to write it! I LOVE your ideas for KKHH2!!
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I had to research this for a class! Yes, there is, the website fanfiction.net has a whole archive. It WILL suck you in.
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Well, I hate to burst your bubble.But if you plan to set up KKHH 2 in India, you’ll have to go with Option 1 -Arjun as Anjali/Alia’s husband and kill him off.Because no way in hell can someone with Anjali’s socio-economic background be an unwed mother in India.It just isn’t done. She’d either have an abortion or give up the baby for adoption.Neena Gupta is the exception to the rule.On the other hand option 2 can be filmed abroad.Karan will probably like it better anyway.Farida can move abroad to support Anjali and her child.Shahrukh and Kajol will be in India raising Anjali’s siblings.
Don 3 without Priyanka won’t be the same.They can’t recast someone else since Don only has a soft spot for Roma.All other women are interchangeable and easily disposable for him.If they make Don 3 I hope they won’t make Shahrukh superhuman and invulnerable like in Don 2.I wonder who’ll they cast as his flavor of the month -Jacqueline? Ilieana? Huma? Or Sunny Leone?
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See, that’s what I said about K2H2 2! You just have to kill off Arjun. And even there, it’s still controversial because she’s a widow.
Although, on the other hand, I like your London idea (I’m just assuming London, because Karan). Alia can already have a scholarship that she was planning to give up, but then decide to take it and raise the baby abroad. And it would explain why Arjun would never know about it, if his child was on a whole different continent. And we could add the idea of part of the love affair and everything in the second half being Alia and her child rediscovering their Indian roots. Heck, we could even reverse Johnny Lever’s character! Make him obsessed with everything Indian instead of British, and therefore be a little mean to Alia’s kid, until Varun steps in and defends him as still “Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani”, even if he wasn’t raised there. Oo oo! Redo the “Om Jai Jagadish” teasing scene with Rani and SRK but make it with Alia’s kid and his camp fellows!
For Don 3, thank you for commentating! Everyone got so excited about K2H2:2, they just ignored the other ideas. Ever since it was semi-confirmed over a year ago that Priyanka wouldn’t be back, I have been thinking that the only way to do it would be to kill her off and make it a revenge plot. Don’t even try to make Don fall in love with someone else. And embrace the idea that her death would be so traumatic, that it would be the one thing to really change him.
On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 3:28 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Or they could make a Don prequel exploring Don’s past.In Don 2 he makes a throwaway remark about his mother being so proud about his notoriety.From which it’s clear that she was a criminal as well.Just not a psychopath.Or they could postpone the movie for a few years and have Don’s illegitimate son (Aryan Khan) tracking him with revenge in mind.
Your Mohabbatein interpretation was the best of all.I absolutely love the idea of Aish not being dead and being in cahoots with Shahrukh.
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I like either of those Don ideas! Except I don’t know if even Shahrukh would be capable of playing a character even younger than a character he first played 10 years ago. But if we had a time machine, absolutely!
My favorite Mohabbatein idea, which involves not just a different reading of the film but re-writing the script, would be if Aish never even faked her death. Instead, she eloped, and that’s what hardened Amitabh’s heart. We find out who Shahrukh is, etc. etc. And we (the audience) think that we have actually been seeing Aish visit him secretly. And we see him making secret phone calls and letters that we assume are to Aish. But at the end end, after Amitabh has given up, Shahrukh goes to talk to him again. And reveals that Aish is dead, she died in childbirth a few years after they eloped. But her dying wish was for her son to know his grandfather. And so Shahrukh waited until his son was old enough to be left behind, and then came her to go through this whole elaborate thing just to soften Amitabh up and make him worthy of meeting his grandson. And that grandson is the one he has been sending letters to and so on. And then the ending shot is all three generations doing the greeting of the sun in the morning.
On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 9:55 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Can you do a post on Shahrukh’s different negative characters?
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I could probably! Maybe next Sunday, after I’ve seen Raees and can include that.
On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 9:57 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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As someone said I think Anjali should have a kid! And wouldn’t Siddharth Malhotra make a good Dead Spouse?
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Oh shoot, I forgot we improved the story in the comments! Little Anjali Jr. was so clear in my mind, I thought it was the real version. You are right, that is the much better version, with Little Anjali’s son going to adventure camp and loving his cool adventure counselor Varun, only for Alia to learn her son’s favorite new teacher is her old best friend.
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Wait..Vicky Kaushal would make a great Dead Spouse!
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Yes! Except them we would be so sad he died that we wouldn’t be ready to move on to the new hero. Oh heck, maybe make Vicky play the hero and Varun becomes the Dead Spouse.
On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 7:21 AM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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