When Will Smith Played Lord Krishna & Matt Damon Was Arjun In Mahabharat's H'wood Adaptation

In recent times, Aamir Khan has expressed his desire to make his most ambitious film project, an adaptation of Mahabharat.

Not just Aamir Khan, SS Rajamouli too has talked about his aspiration to make Mahabharat for the big screen and so has filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri.

Interestingly, not just Indian cinema, even Hollywood has been fascinated by the Mahabharat and in the year 2000, an English-language film was made that was an adaptation of the epic text starring Will Smith and Matt Damon.

© iStock

The film was titled The Legend of Bagger Vance and featured Will Smith in a character inspired by Lord Krishna and Matt Damon playing a character inspired by Arjun.

The film specifically takes heavy inspirations from the Bhagavad Gita chapter of Mahabharat where Lord Krishna teaches Arjun when he is reluctant to attack Kaurava who are his own family members as well and refuses to fight.

Instead of the battlefield of Kurukshetra, there is a golf course in the film and 18 days of Mahabharat are represented by 18 holes in the sport of golf.

In the film, Will Smith plays Bagger Vance, a caddy to Rannulph Junuh played by Matt Damon. He helps him overcome the challenges of life and how to master them.

© DreamWorks Pictures

Interestingly, the names of the lead characters were also a reference to the Mahabharat. Rannulph Junuh is R. Junuh which sounds like Arjuna in pronunciation. Similarly, Bagger Vance is a reference to Bhagvan (God), in this case Lord Krishna.

View this post on Instagram

The film was based on Steven Pressfield's 1995 book The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life which was loosely inspired by Mahabharat.

The Legend of Bagger Vance was directed by Hollywood legend Robert Redford. The film failed to impress critics and was a box office flop.

It has a 43 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and 6.7 out of 10 rating on IMDb.

Set in 1931, the film was made on a huge budget of $80 million and collected only $39.50 million.