Distributors were said to have paid anywhere between Rs 92 lakh and Rs 1 crore per territory.Īnd publicists were working round the clock putting out tall tales about Amrohi’s mad quest for creating perfection. Spectacular sets, fabulous battle scenes, glittering costumes and a smashing musical score – everything, in fact, associated with the highly-charged and eccentric Amrohi who created the legendary Pakeezah.Such being the background, little wonder that everyone got carried away. Beside offering dream girl Hema Malini in the role of a lifetime – as the 13th century queen of the Slave dynasty – Razia Sultan, it seemed, had everything going for it. Seven years in the making, the film had seemed to be of the stuff of which cinematic legends and box-office blockbusters are made. Within days of its release, Kamal Amrohi’s epic Razia Sultan, said to be the most expensive movie to come out of the Bombay industry (estimates range from Rs 4 crore to Rs 10 crore), had torpedoed at the box-office sending shockwaves of despair through the national film producer-distributor network. Amrohi’s focus on the supposed romance between Razia (Hema Malini) and her Abyssinian slave general Yakut (Dharmendra) reduces the complex power play to a squabble between suitors.Īs mentioned by IndiaToday in a web article, this is what happened around the release week of Razia Sultan in September of 1983:.The depiction of thirteenth-century India was not as immersive as K Asif’s Mughal-E-Azam (1960), on which Amrohi was one of the writers.

The actors didn’t live up to the regal setting of the film and came out very wooden.Razia Sultan, in all its magnificence failed at the box office, there were many reasons for this, but one cannot falter the music of this film.

Razia sultan background voice