Starring Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan, Umrao Jaan was a massive flop. Director JP Dutta wanted to make the film with Priyanka Chopra.
Written by poet and author Mirza Hadi Ruswa in 1899, Umrao Jaan Ada is among the finest novels in Urdu literature. Based on the story of how a girl, sold to a brothel in childhood, becomes one of the most popular tawaifs in Lucknow, the book has seen multiple adaptions in films and television in India and Pakistan.
The most famous one is Rekha-starrer Umrao Jaan in 1981, which was directed by Muzaffar Ali and is often counted among the classics in Hindi cinema. In 2006, when JP Dutta’s Umrao Jaan released with Aishwarya Rai in the titular role, the audiences were keen to see if she would be able to match the grace and beauty of Rekha, but the film and Aishwarya’s performance failed to win over the hearts of the audiences.
The period musical drama also starred Abhishek Bachchan (who hadn’t married Aishwarya by then), Shabana Azmi, Suniel Shetty, Divya Dutta, and Kulbhushan Kharbanda in pivotal roles. Made in Rs 15 crore, Umrao Jaan was a massive commercial failure as it couldn’t even recover half of its budget and earned only Rs 7.42 crore net in India (as per the Box Office India portal).
Before Umrao Jaan’s release, JP Dutta revealed that Aishwarya Rai wasn’t his first choice for Umrao Jaan as he wanted to make the film with Priyanka Chopra. Talking to PTI in 2005, the Border director said, “I had reached a stage where I had to take a decision. I wanted to work with Priyanka. I saw her as Umrao Jaan. But we were at a dead end.” He revealed that Priyanka rejected the film because of her “clogged dates diary”.
Sharing why she refused Umrao Jaan, Priyanka Chopra also told PTI in 2005, “I had great plans about how to play the role. JP saab wanted 90 days of my dates at a stretch which I couldn’t give him. If it didn’t work out, then I guess it wasn’t meant to be. I can’t brood over what didn’t happen when there’s so much that’s happening.”
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Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan in Umrao Jaan
After Umrao Jaan bombed at the box office, JP Dutta took another 12 years to make his next film titled Paltan in 2018. Starring an ensemble cast of Jackie Shroff, Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Harshvardhan Rane, Sonal Chauhan, Esha Gupta, and others, the war drama also turned out to be a huge disappointment. Dutta hasn’t announced his next film yet.
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