Chennai Express, Shah Rukh Khan’s gambit to upstage Salman Khan, seems to have done sensational business. The movie’s makers are already running full page advertisements in newspapers saying how the movie has broken the record for the fastest Rs 100 crore (just over $16mn) collection.
This is the mark that all film stars, directors and producers now aspire to. The Khans are the regular members of this club. It was a number first bandied about by the Salman Khan camp and almost all Rohit Shetty movies have crossed the mark. But there is a small catch to it.
All the box office collection figures are given out by the filmmakers themselves and it is impossible for anyone to independently verify whether it is true or not. When movies driven by small and medium stars give out such extraordinary numbers everyone takes it with a pinch of salt. But when it comes to the three Khans, it is swallowed as gospel truth.
And then it becomes like a self fulfilling prophecy. Because the movie has made 100 crores everyone wants to watch it.
Meanwhile, Shah Rukh is riding on a high. Whether Chennai Express has made that much money or no might be debated but what is beyond question is that it has given Shah Rukh a new leash of life at superstardom which was fast waning.
For the last couple of years it has been Salman Khan and Aamir Khan all the way.
Even when Shah Rukh’s films like Ra.One were said to have made over 100 crore, there was just no buzz to it. That was why he chose to work with Rohit Shetty, who seems to be the master of this club.
The movie itself has been panned by critics. As an actor, Shah Rukh is only going in a downward direction. Most critics were unanimous that Deepika Padukone had outdone him in comic timing in Chennai Express.



The patch up

There was a time when Aishwarya Rai was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s muse and then she was not. The movie which gave him his exalted status in Bollywood was Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. It was a movie that had a lot of other seminal firsts to it. It was during its making that the lead pair, Salman Khan and Aishwarya, began their relationship. That was the golden period of their affair which went downhill from there on as Salman got painted as an obsessive lover.
Many things followed from then on including him creating a ruckus in the sets of a movie produced by Shah Rukh Khan in which Aishwarya was acting. Shah Rukh sacked her and that led to another famous long-standing estrangement. When the Salman-Aishwarya break up happened it was ugly.
Salman was accused of stalking and Aishwarya wrote a front page letter in a newspaper describing how much she had suffered due to his temperament. At the time, the man who came out all guns blazing in Salman’s support was Bhansali. He had also lambasted Aishwarya for making the accusations against Salman.
Things had cooled between them after that and it was not until almost a decade when Bhansali fell out with Salman that he worked with Aishwarya again in Guzaarish. The movie didn’t do too well but it seems he is not willing to let go of Aishwarya’s second innings as his muse.
For some time there have been persistent rumours that Aishwarya will have an item number in Bhansali’s under-production movie Ram Leela. This might have been a good way to show that Aishwarya was back in the glamorous avatar after her pregnancy.
Bhansali has said that there is no truth in this rumour but true to Bollywood’s tradition no one is willing to believe it at the moment.

Break up, again

Among other things to do with Salman Khan’s love life, something predictable might have happened. It is being said that he has broken up with his Romanian girlfriend Iulia Vantur.
Some time back there were increasing reports of them being sighted together at coffee shops and events leading everyone to speculate that the superstar had again decided to go steady.
There were whispers of how smitten he was with her and that he was even ready for marriage. Now you hear that that it is over.
What is intriguing is the reason cited. Apparently, his family heard that Vantur is already married to a musician. Though she denied it herself, they were not convinced. And neither was Salman by the looks of it and is avoiding her.
It is said that she has returned to her home country and Salman is back to his lonesome self. He is not going to want for women to swoon over him, that is certain. But then superstars are also, at the end of the day, human beings and every break up must hurt.


Sunny heights


This might not be too flattering to the celebrities of Bollywood but a newcomer has upstaged all of them when it comes to online popularity. Or, to be specific, the celebrity who is most searched for in Google.
According to statistics by Google, the term ‘Sunny Leone’ was searched 35mn times in June. This is about thrice the number of people who searched for Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor. There is, of course, a catch to it. Leone is one of the most popular porn stars in the world and it is not just Indians who are searching for her.
But what it shows is that her popularity in the online world, however it might have been achieved, is more than Indian celebrities. Meanwhile, she is trying to cash in on it in multiple ways.
While she is more or less established in Bollywood after her debut film went on to do well thanks to her sex appeal, it is now being said that her husband Daniel Weber is also going to test his luck here. It’s hard to see him making any kind of impact. Male porn stars really don’t have any following in India.  

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