A year ago on this day, the acclaimed film Maharaj dropped on Netflix. The debut vehicle of Junaid Khan, which also starred Sharvari and Shalini Pandey, was all set to release on the streaming platform on June 14. But due to a court case in the Gujarat High Court, the release was stayed. The hearing then went on for a week and finally on June 21, 2024, the stay was lifted. Netflix immediately released the film on the same day. There was a fear that the courtroom drama, which dropped online without any publicity, might go unnoticed. However, it ended up becoming one of the most-watched films on OTT last year.
1 Year of Maharaj EXCLUSIVE: Siddharth P Malhotra shares NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN BTS images; reveals, “We had so many plans for Aamir Khan’s son’s debut and NOTHING happened…We PANICKED and self-censored 15 minutes…magnanimous of Jaideep Ahlawat who understood reason behind it”
As Maharaj celebrated its first anniversary, its director Siddharth P Malhotra not just exclusively opened up about unknown trivia about the film but also shared exclusive pictures from the sets of the film with Bollywood Hungama.
Maharaj had a tumultuous journey. Its release was thwarted at the last minute and then it became popular on Netflix once it was out. How do you look back at the journey after all it went through?
Even now, I feel shocked that it has already been released! The trauma was so huge. A year ago, we didn’t know whether the film would be coming out. Imagine you have given a successful film like Hichki (2018), you’d naturally assume that ‘Next film toh bahar aa hi jaayegi’. Instead, Maharaj took 5 years to see the light of day. On top of that, the original version didn’t out. We had to cut so much from the film and it’s not the film that we have eventually made. I was like, ‘Baap re baap’.
A year later, I just feel gratitude over the fact that people loved it despite what it could have been. I am grateful it did the kind of numbers it did for Netflix. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have got the work that I got today. This industry is very humbling. Every Friday, it shows you where you belong. Whether or not you are privileged, if you stop getting calls on that Friday, toh samaj jaao ki aapka packup ho gaya!
It dropped on Netflix without any publicity, trailer or song. It was Aamir Khan’s son’s debut. We had so many plans and nothing happened!
You just mentioned that you had to cut a lot of stuff from the film. What was the reason?
We self-censored 15-20 minutes of the film. The original version would have been a powerful film and yet, wouldn’t have hurt anybody’s sentiments. But because of the tension created before release, we panicked and started self-censoring every word. We were like, ‘Kahin yeh bhi toh galat nahin hai? Agar zara bhi lagta hai toh nikal do’!
It focused on what the Britishers felt at that point of time about the case. What was Maharaj’s take on why Maharaj was Maharaj? What was Maharaj’s answer to Karsan in the end? Didn’t Maharaj himself come to the court? So, if he has, he will obviously speak, right? He won’t just keep on smiling. In an earlier scene, Maharaj says, ‘Usko aisa sabak sikhayenge ki uske baad koi Karsandas Haveli ki taraf aankh utha ke nahin dekhega’. So, what was that ‘sabak’? That ‘sabak’ was shot by us. Thanks to that scene, the arguments seemed compelling. And both points of view are right in their way and that’s where things got interesting in the court.
In 2021, we saw a ‘Snyder Cut’ of Justice League (2017) being released. Can we expect a ‘Siddharth Cut’ of Maharaj?
Not in this lifetime! I wish I could release the ‘Siddharth Cut’ not just of Maharaj but also We Are Family (2010). The Siddharth cut is there. It just needs to be released in a way we approved it.
Maybe you can release once things die down…
I don’t think it’ll ever die down. The people who objected to the film claimed that the Supreme Court of Bombay’s 1862 verdict was unfair. If your argument is that Supreme Court ki argument galat hai, toh aap Supreme Court ko challenge kar rahe ho. Phir main kya hoon?
The version, which is out is also powerful, but its missing certain layers. People who are into filmmaking will understand ‘Yeh scene mein kaata hai’, ‘Woh scene mein bhi kaata hai’. The layman might not notice it. Kudos to my editor Shweta Venkat. She did a fantastic job. She kept the narrative seamless.
It was also magnanimous of Jaideep Ahlawat who saw the self-censored version and understood the reason behind it. He never told me once, ‘Why did you do it?’.
What was it like on June 13, 2024, when you learned that the film’s June 14 release has been stalled?
On June 13, we had a trial show at the preview theatre at YRF Studios and it was attended by a lot of people of the industry like Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi etc. We were excited. Junaid Khan and Jaideep Ahlawat were also with me.
At 11 pm, we were informed that the film was not coming the next day. Hence, after the screening, we had to tell everyone, ‘Even if you guys have liked the film, you cannot write anything about it’. You make films for appreciation and validation. At that screening, I got the validation, that too from the greats, but you have to tell them, ‘Please don’t tell the world about it’! The trial then ran for 5 more days. It was heartbreaking.
More Pages: Maharaj Box Office Collection , Maharaj Movie Review
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