Biopics On Amar Singh Chamkila That Couldn’t See Light Of The Day

We all are well aware of Amar Singh Chamkila, a popular singer, lyricist and music composer of the 80s era, mostly panned for his controversial songs. New age singers are using his compositions and even using his name in the middle of their songs to gain popularity. There have been many attempts to bring Chamkila alive on celluloid, but none of the project could see the light of the day.

The very first attempt was made by Hindi Film Director Anurag Kashyap, Kunal Kapoor and Navdeep Singh in 2009. This project was titled Chamkila and trio did a lot of research on the slain singer.

Kunal himself got involved in script writing to understand the character. Research took a lot of time. Huma Qureshi, Richa Chadda and Surveen Chawla were being considered for Female Lead. Amit Trivedi even recorded some songs for the film, but Anurag got busy with other assignments, and Chamkila could not go beyond announcement. Kunal Kapoor was very upset with the film being shelved.

Next attempt was in Punjabi Film Industry, Deepa Rai, a UK based singer started the film on Chamkila’s life, it was titled Chamkila- The Legend. Many big wigs including Dharmendra was supposed to do this film. Though senior artists like Daljit Kaur, Nirmal Rishi, Surinder Shinda etc. shot for the film.Gurleen Kaur (also worked in The Black Prince) and Poonam Sood played Amarjot and Chamkila’s wife’s characters. The film was started in 2012,and is said to be complete, but yet to release.

Another one is docudrama Mehsampur. While the trailer of this film is already out, but makers are yet to shoot some crucial parts of the film. They’re trying to raise funds to complete this one of a kind concept based on the late singer’s life.

Sometime back, there was buzz in the industry that Babbu Mann will play Chamkila in Mushtaq Pasha’s next. At that time, Chamkila’s family objected that makers did not approach them for the approval. Now it seems that project has been shelved, and the same team is working on another film with a different subject.

Short Film Wand & Once Upon A Time In Amritsar fame Gurjind Mann too made an announcement of film based on the legendary singer, but now he is busy with another interesting film called Punjab Singh.

Late Chamkila is widely listened and discussed on online platforms, and it will be wonderful to see his life story on big screen, but seems like some jinx is related to the biopics related to him, that none of the film based on him could release theatrically.