| NO COFFEE: Karan Johar (left) and Shah Rukh Khan |
How fickle are friendships built over decades — it was just a few years ago that Karan Johar used to say that there could not be any movie of his in which Shah Rukh was not present. And even in movies produced by him, like Kaal, a horror flick, Shah Rukh had a dance number in the end.
And Karan’s chat show Koffee With Karan would always have an episode with the King Khan. In fact, the very first episode of the very first season featured him. Except that this time, in the fourth season, Shah Rukh might not be there. There are only two episodes left and there are other stars slated in it.
This, of course, has set all sorts of tongues wagging. Then there is the fact that it has been half a decade since Shah Rukh last acted in a Karan Johar movie. That was My Name Is Khan. Recently, Hrithik Roshan pulled out of Karan’s Shuddhi and he approached Shah Rukh to act in it. He was reportedly given a polite ‘no’.
When and where did this rift happen? No one is really sure but it might have something to do with the time that Shah Rukh was reportedly having an affair with Priyanka Chopra and Karan chose to side with his wife Gauri and even had covert public slanging match with Priyanka.
Though Shah Rukh and Gauri seem to have tided over those crisis-ridden days, it cannot but have left its effects on his relationship with other non-family members who took part in the family drama. The silver lining for Karan is that though Shah Rukh has often before distanced friends like Farah Khan, they have also managed to return to favour.
Script sale
Every superstar is a producer now but what is rarely discussed is the conflict of interest that this phenomenon creates. Why stars should be producing movies is not hard to understand — in the system prevalent in Bollywood, movies are completely dependent on them to pull in the audience.
So they started charging obscene fees and then profit sharing and then at some point decided to make movies themselves because they would then be saving on the biggest expense of a movie, the salary of the hero. Recently, there was an example of how this can create issues for regular producers.
The director duo Abbas-Mustan had been commissioned by a production company to make a movie on a famous crime of 1959 in which a navy commander had shot dead his wife’s lover. A writer had made a script on it and Abbas-Mustan had been working on it for some time. They wanted John Abraham to act in it and went to him to narrate the script. John liked it but, when negotiating with the production company, demanded a huge sum to act in the movie. The next Abbas-Mustan heard was that the production company had dropped the movie and John had bought the script from the writer.
He had decided to make the movie himself! It has left the directors wringing their hands but there is little they can do about it.
Facebook trouble
As someone who lets his outspokenness get the better of him, Anurag Kashyap finds himself in controversy yet again. To take a past illustration, when his brother Abhinav Kashyap refused to do the sequel of Dabanng and the producer Arbaaz Khan decided to direct it himself, Anurag tweeted about how he expected the film to be a disaster.
The film went on to become a superhit. More recently after Lunchbox, co-produced by him, was not selected as the movie sent for the Academy Awards from India, he had gone on a rant on Twitter and then abruptly shut down his account.
But you could say those were quibbles within the industry and he had some locus standi. But the latest controversy goes beyond that. It has to do with comments he made related to a case of sexual assault between the editor of a national magazine and an employee there.
The editor is currently in jail for the last few months and has been claiming that the CCTV footage of the hotel where this alleged incident happened exonerates him. Recently, two senior journalists did articles on the CCTV footage and the issue got revived again. It was at this point the Anurag put up a Facebook post saying that he had seen the footage and whatever the victim claimed was just not true.
This, of course, raised the question of how he got access to the footage in the first place. This is an especially sensitive issue since the law decrees that the rape victim’s identity cannot be revealed and the footage does that. Then there was the clear certificate of innocence that Anurag had given to the accused even when the trial of the case had not even started. He has maintained silence after that initial comment but it has got him some really bad press.
Casting replay?
It is said that one of Madhuri Dixit’s most iconic role in the 1992 movie Beta came to her after Sridevi had rejected it. Its song Dhak Dhak Karne Laga became an all-time rage. That is also the time when Madhuri slowly upstaged Sridevi as the top actress in the film industry. Come 2014, you would think the possibility of a repeat happening would be almost impossible. But something like that seems to have come to pass.
Rajesh Roshan, the music director and brother of Rakesh Roshan, is producing a movie and was eager to cast Sridevi in it. She was interested but then, suddenly, backed out of the project.
A tabloid reported that it was because her husband Boney Kapoor had reservations about it. Roshan is now trying to get Madhuri Dixit to act in the movie. It is not a given that Madhuri will accept it but if she does, it will be something of a throwback to the good old times when one stepped into the other shoes.
Send your feedback to
