Had Hindi film Zanjeer not been a smashing hit, the Odia movie industry would have had an Amitabh Bachchan movie in its kitty.
Sounds strange, but it is a fact.
According to film historian Surya Deo, Amitabh Bachchan along with Shatrughan Sinha, Rekha and Jayashree T was signed for Odia movie Mukta. The rest of the cast comprised of Sarat Pujari, Babi, Dukhiram, Netrananda, Biren Routray, Bijay Mohanty and Asim Basu.
In fact, the film would have been trilingual and would have been shot in Odia, Bengali and Assamese. Amitabh Bachchan had a 10-day shooting schedule for the film and had already seven days of shooting at Kolkata.
However, it was at that time only Zanjeer released and Amitabh Bachchan became an overnight star with his ‘angry young man’ image. Offers flooded in for ‘Big B’ and he did not have the time to complete his remaining scenes in Mukta. Thus what could be have been historical for the Odia film industry fizzled out and Mukta was shelved
Mukta was based on the Charles Dickens novel ‘Oliver Twist’. The film till the time it was shot was produced by Tito.
It should be stated here that Tito also produced the Amitabh-Rekha-starrer Do Anjane in which Mithun Chakrabarty did a small cameo.
Mithun, another superstar of the Hindi film industry later went on to act in a number of Odia movies like…Kurukshetra, Ae Jugara Krushna Sudama, Baruda, Coolie, Raja and Sahara Jaluchi.
PNN