Ready to be silly and shallow and indulgent? Let’s recast an iconic story for India and try to create a similarly iconic cast!
Sex and The City!!!! An immediately iconic and transferable central group of characters, we should totally recast it for India.
Carrie: The central seeker character, looking for love, a mixture of bohemian outsiderness and softness. An artist.
Miranda: The tough career woman who doesn’t expect love and finds it in an unexpected place. A lawyer
Samantha: The older more experienced woman who plans a life of pleasurable short term connections. A successful promotions expert.
Charlotte: The sweet one who wants a traditional life as a wife and mother. A rich woman working for fun and living on her trust fund.
And the men:
Mr. Big: Very rich, very impressive, sweeps Carrie off her feet and then confuses her.
Steve: Nice easy going bartender who has a surprise baby with Miranda, and they end up finding their way to love despite opposite personalities.
Trey: Charlotte’s perfect respectable husband who ends up being distant and unsatisfying and simply not loving her enough.
Harry: Charlotte’s not perfect divorce lawyer who loves her very very much and wins her over by simply caring for her.
Okay, Indian remake!!!! Pretty straight forward, it’s almost what we already got in Veere Di Wedding. We can put them all in the Bombay film industry, Carrie is an outsider journalist/web star, Samantha is a powerful Agent, Miranda is a lawyer specializing in film cases, and Charlotte is a sweet young upperclass rich woman who works in the costume department or something respectable like that.
Mr. Big, should he be a movie star or a producer?
Steve, we can make him a pleasant young dialogue writer, not very ambitious, but clever and nice.
Trey, boring Bombay businessman type.
Harry, aggressive divorce lawyer who is from the Maharashtrian Jewish community.
Three women are best friends, each of them fumble along with their romances, their storylines interacting, and they all end in happy places.
Casting:
Carrie: Alia Bhatt
Miranda: Swara Bhaskar
Charlotte: Sonam Kapoor
Samantha: Rani Mukherjee
Mr. Big: ????
Steve: Rajkummar or Ayushmann
Trey: Ranbir Kapoor
Harry: Kunaal Roy Kapoor
What do you think? Changing my cast choices at all? And WHO can play Mr. Big??? And should we add on Baryshnikov somehow, or Aiden?
Rani as Samantha is inspired. I watched quite a bit of this show despite disliking it but the only men I can remember from it are Mr Big and Harry. At least Harry had a personality, I can’t really remember anything about Mr Big except that he was boring.What about Salman? He’s good at not talking much and seeming rich.
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Yeah, I think I am most pleased with Rani as Samantha too. What about Anil as Mr. Big? Cool, rich, tough, confident?
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 1:15 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yeah but Anil is really nice and also actually attractive. I can’t be doing with that for Mr Big.
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Abhishek Bachchan?
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 2:22 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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You know, he’d be perfect. I still like him too much but if you told him to act unattractive he could do it.
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Wait, are you saying Mr. Big is supposed to be unattractive as a character or that you personally found him unattractive? I always read him as charmingly confident and charismatic to most people, and then frustrating and anger making once you got to know him better.
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 3:05 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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He’s so fundamentally unappealing to me as a character that I have no idea what they were trying to do with him. I don’t know if he’s meant to be funny, or charming, or domineering, or sweet, or what. To me he’s a guy I don’t want to talk to and I can’t get beyond that even though I realise the series wants me to think he is the hero in some way.
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If we are re-writing Sex and the City, should we have Carrie end up single? I think Abhishek as an overly aggressive and sort of dominating type would be well within his abilities.
And then Taapsee-Carrie can end the series after almost marrying a Nice Man, deciding she doesn’t want to settle for being just a spoiled wife, nor does she want to deal with the constant struggle of Mr. Big, instead she would rather be single. YES! I like this ending!!!! Taapsee’s friends break her out of her wedding, Mr. Big is waiting outside and she turns him down, and it ends with her happily going off with her friends. Dips/Charlotte ends up with Ranveer/Harry, and Miranda/Swara with Ayushmann/Steve, the other two are happily single.
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Yes, this is the only acceptable ending! I want her to realise she IS Mr Big. You’re already successful, Carrie! You don’t need some schmo to give you the social status you already have, bang a bunch of fashion designer hipster guys and marry your friends.
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Maybe the happy ending is her giving a flirty glance at the camera as she spots Kunal Kapoor in the distance, implying that her life is going to be a string of casual encounters from now on?
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Yes! Good choice of raffish hook up.
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Swara, Rani, Ayushmann (over Rajkumar) and Ranbir (lol) are well cast. I’m not sure about Sonam or Kunal. I feel Alia should be recasted because if you want big B to be impressive I think you would want someone older and so I feel the actress should be older in age too. I like the idea of Saif. I can see him as a high profile movie producer.
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What about Taapsee for Carrie? And I like Saif for Mr. Big too, that’s a great idea.
What about Dips instead of Sonam? And then we just go for it and make Ranveer play Harry?
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 1:20 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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You missed an important character trait for Carrie – shallow and self-centered…this is someone who has the ability to make any situation about herself…this is not just me there are MANY articles pointing out the various instances where Carrie was the worst. See this entire blog dedicated to the cause: https://carriebradshawistheworst.com/
I don’t think Alia could play this character…she would make Carrie nice/empathetic…I think this role was written for Kangana…an outsider, a rebel..a little kooky…loves the sound of her own voice and dropping silly musings that she believes is profound wisdom….oh and downright self-obsessed!
Love the casting of Rani, and Sonam!
Oh, and Mr. Big was also the worst…I think Ranbir is perfect for him…stringing along women without a care for their emotions/consequences…dumping them at the altar then writing a one-line email to apologize…Ranbir would play it perfectly and make us sympathize with Mr. Big’s inner pain.
How about Abhishek for Aiden? But then I would hate to watch him get cheated on yet again… it’s too cruel…how about Arjun Rampal…he kinda looks like the previous Aiden…
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Okay, now we have a different ending for our Indian version!!! If we are doing Kangana and Mr. Big, then clearly they DO get married at the end. Rani and Swara and Sonam/Dips (I’m torn between the two) show up to rescue her from her wedding to Abhishek, and then Ranbir is waiting outside the doors, and she promptly dumps her friends and runs off with him. The other three women look at each other and realization dawns that, to Kangana, they have always been just supporting characters in her drama. Best to let her and Ranbir go off together and tear each other apart, while they continue to be happy and supportive friends to each other and their adoring supportive partners (except Rani/Samantha, she ends up single, as is only right).
Totally original potential second half, dumped at the alter Abhishek ends up with either Rani/Samantha (she starts a fling with him partly because she feels sorry for him, but then they form an unexpected connection). Or with Dips, replacing the divorce lawyer Harry in her love story.
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 4:53 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Yes! I would totally watch a show/movie where Kangana and Ranbir battle it out for biggest victim!
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I would not watch that, but I would watch something about everyone else in their lives realizing they are toxic and avoiding them.
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 5:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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