Parmeet Sethi, who was devoted to acting and filmmaking until 2010, received a major setback in his career when his passion project-a biopic on the great Indian wrestler Ghulam Mohammad Baksh Butt, better known as The Great Gama-was put on the backburner.
Having finished the script, Parmeet approached Aditya Chopra of Yash Raj Productions first. But Chopra was already making a similar wrestling-based movie, Sultan, starring Salman Khan, and told Parmeet that making two such films on the same topic wasn’t possible.
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Unfazed, Parmeet approached John Abraham, who was impressed with the script and agreed to star in and produce the film. The project was full of promise, and initial preparations were underway.
But a month later, Salman Khan announced Sultan officially, and studios withdrew from Parmeet’s project because of the similarity in themes and the larger market pull of Khan’s film.
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This forced Parmeet and John to leave the film, and it shattered their hearts. Parmeet exposed that this bump halted a dramatic slowdown in his filmmaking path between 2010 and 2015 and finally drove him back into acting to keep up his career. Recalling the experience, he stated, “You have to do something to keep the kitchen running.”
This episode highlights how industry dynamics and timing can drastically impact careers. John Abraham’s potentially career-defining film was shelved because Sultan took the lead, underscoring the challenges filmmakers face in bringing passion projects to life.
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