Not again: Ekta Kapoor’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobaara is in the eye of a storm following a dispute with Shah Rukh Khan.
Once upon a disputeIt is in the nature of Shah Rukh Khan to celebrate every successful hit with a trail of newly created enemies. When Jab Tak Hain Jaan released, there was a running feud over monopolising of movie theatres with Ajay Devgn whose movie Son of Sardaar was also hitting the screens. And now with Chennai Express doing superlative business, there is another person who is blaming Shah Rukh for her movie turning out to be a dud. Ekta Kapoor, whose Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobara saw lukewarm response from the audience, says it is all the fault of Shah Rukh and Chennai Express. The history of it goes to the time when Ekta was initially going to release her movie on August 8, the Eid holiday, but then Chennai Express’s producers, which include Shah Rukh, also announced their movie on that day. There was a nasty face-off which was resolved with Ekta backing off and agreeing to release Once Upon a Time a week later. She says she was promised that most of the movie theatres would be freed by then for her movie. As things turned out, Chennai Express did extraordinarily well and Shah Rukh decided that good sense was in good business. They refused to withdraw Chennai Express. Ekta is a now apparently livid. More so, because her father Jeetendra whom Shah Rukh had approached earlier to resolve their pre-release stand-off, tried to get in touch with him but couldn’t. That was adding insult to injury. On top of that Ekta now believes that the star of her movie, Akshay Kumar, didn’t promote it enough. Unlike Ajay Devgn, who got into the picture when Son of Sardaar was having the same dispute, Akshay kept a wary distance. Apparently, he and Ekta have now sorted out the differences with him even offering to return some part of his fee. But the war with Shah Rukh has probably just begun. Ekta is not known for soft punches and is battle hardened. She won’t take this lying down.Tweet that wasn’tHow is it that the more he tries to underline his apathy and distaste for politics, Amitabh Bachchan keeps getting drawn into its murky waters? Even at the height of his association with Amar Singh, he did not campaign for Samajwadi Party to which Singh belonged. Amitabh’s wife is a Rajya Sabha member of that party but even then he has been hands off. He has however, had no qualms endorsing states which these politicians govern. He has spoken for Uttar Pradesh’s development. And some time back, he became the brand ambassador for Gujarat’s tourism initiative. That itself had been controversial because the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, has been accused of bias during widespread communal riots under his watch in 2002. Since then, Modi has become the unstated prime ministerial nominee of the Bharatiya Janata Party when India goes to elections next year. Recently, Amitabh got a shock when he heard his voice in a video clip talking about India needing a great leader with Modi’s image in the background. It was as good as an endorsement by him and the voice was also his. But he had never made that endorsement. He wrote an extended tweeted which began with, ‘FAKE !! FAKE !! ... DEAR ALL ... FAKE VIDEO CIRCULATION …’ He went on to clarify that in 2007, he had talked about ‘glorification of the country and India !’ in a newspaper’s initiative to select leaders from the common men. Someone had cut paste those words to make it sound as if he was eulogising Modi. Amitabh stated that what was done was illegal and had angered him. Ironically, Modi himself tweeted later that he agreed with Amitabh. And the man who had made the tweet also apologised to Amitabh in public.Silver liningNormally, if you are a producer, you don’t take too kindly to calls asking for your film to be banned but for John Abraham, it might actually not be such a bad thing. After his successful debut production Vicky Donor, John had again teamed up with its director Shoojit Sircar to make the just released Madras Café. It is a thriller set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war against Tamil separatist groups. Just as the movie’s publicity and promotions started, groups from Tamil Nadu started calling for a ban on the movie because they said it showed Tamils in a bad light. John held a special screening for the protestors but that didn’t mollify them. Lately, Tamil Nadu has been witnessing an increase in such meddling by groups looking for easy publicity. Kamal Hasan’s Dashavatar had also got stalled because of them. But whereas Hasan’s movie was dependent on Tamil Nadu’s audience, John had no such concerns given that it is a Hindi movie. He said he was not going to agree to any of their demands because the censor board had cleared his movie. Many theatres in Tamil Nadu are not showing it. But it is not a market that is crucial to him. What he got instead was a ton-load of free publicity.Salman’s travailsThe gods are not smiling on Salman Khan’s under production movies. Mental, directed by his brother Sohail, was supposed to be his big hit of 2013 but that has now been pushed for next year because of a wide range of troubles including a fight between stuntmen in the sets. And now another movie Kick is going through similar pangs. It was supposed to be shot in United Kingdom but there came an odd spanner in the works with the country refusing to give him a visa. The reason was probably a hit and run case for which he is facing trial. After some hurried crisis management it was said that Salman did get a visa but it turns out it is a tourist visa and not a work visa without which he can’t shoot there. The producer of Kick, Sajid Nadiadwala, is now making plans to shift the shooting somewhere else.Send your feedback to bollywood.eye@gmail.com