Sanjay Gupta Dies at 59 After Accidental Fall — SkimNews
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- Sanjay Gupta died at 59 on Oct. 30 after falling at his Mumbai residence and hitting his head. Longtime friend Milap Zaveri confirmed the death to Press Trust of India, while Versova police filed an accidental-death report after his family became aware of the incident the next morning without raising suspicion. He is survived by his wife and two children.
- Kaante was one of Gupta’s biggest successes in 2002, casting Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt, Suniel Shetty, Mahesh Manjrekar, Lucky Ali and Kumar Gaurav in a Los Angeles-set bank-robbery thriller; the production changed its location schedule after the Sept. 11 attacks, and Gupta received a Filmfare best-director nomination.
- Sanjay Dutt built a 10-film professional relationship with Gupta from “Aatish: Feel the Fire” (1994) onward, spanning films Gupta directed and produced; after Gupta’s death, Dutt said Gupta had always been “family” to him.
- Show East said in November 2005 that it was considering legal remedies if Gupta’s completed “Zinda” proved substantially similar to Park Chan-wook’s “Oldboy”; the Hindi thriller went on to attract particular controversy over the resemblance.
- Kaabil had Gupta direct Hrithik Roshan as a visually impaired man pursuing vengeance in the 2017 film produced by Rakesh Roshan.
- Rahul Dholakia recalled Gupta as a stylish filmmaker and “maybe the first” to use trailers and promotional cuts to pitch film ideas to actors and distributors.
- Kaante 2 remained at an early stage: after resolving a dispute involving White Feather Films and Pritish Nandy Communications, Gupta said earlier this year that its story had been worked out “at a very base level” and that he intended to begin writing the screenplay.
Why it matters: Sanjay Dutt loses a collaborator with whom he built a 10-film professional relationship spanning Gupta’s directing and producing work, while Hindi cinema loses a 59-year-old filmmaker prominent in glossy, Hollywood-influenced crime cinema. Gupta’s wife, two children and colleagues bear the immediate loss, and “Kaante 2” remains at the base-level development stage.
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