Karan Johar has spent two decades defending, dissecting and, at times, second-guessing Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. On the season nine premiere of Koffee With Karan on JioHotstar, with Salman Khan as the first guest, he offered the film another turn in the conversation: when Karisma Kapoor asked which of his own films he would remake, Johar named the 2006 infidelity drama without hesitation.
A blunt warning in a London lobby
The answer came with a memory. Johar recalled being pulled into a lecture by Salman Khan in the lobby of a London hotel over the original film. ‘He fired me about making that film,’ Johar said. According to the episode, Salman began by suggesting changes, then cut his thought short: ‘Don’t make that film.’
The remark is less a production order than a reminder of how polarising the title has always been. It also captures the unusual place Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna occupies in Johar’s own filmography: personally defended, publicly debated and never comfortably settled.
Why KANK still splits the room
Released in 2006, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna starred Shah Rukh Khan as Dev and Rani Mukerji as Maya, two unhappily married people who develop feelings for each other. Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta and Amitabh Bachchan completed the central cast. Its subject of infidelity, marital dissatisfaction and consequence made it an outlier in mainstream Hindi cinema at the time.
When the film completed 20 years in August 2026, Johar acknowledged its flaws while defending its intent. He called it ‘over bloated in scale’ and said it had ‘opulent (and some unnecessary) songs’, but argued that its heart was in the right place and that it never endorsed infidelity.
- The original was polarising, not a universal crowd-pleaser.
- Johar has publicly admitted its flaws but defended its purpose.
- Any remake would have to confront the very elements Salman flagged.
What the choice signals
Choosing Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna for a remake reads as a filmmaker wanting to revisit contested material with twenty years of distance, perhaps with tighter scale, fewer songs and clearer moral stakes. But it also raises a harder question: can a film so tied to its original moment and its cast’s star power be remade without losing what made it worth discussing?
For now, it remains a rapid-fire answer, not a production announcement. The exchange is a piece of Hindi cinema memory: a superstar’s candid objection, a director’s enduring attachment, and a film that still refuses to be filed away neatly.
Source: News18
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