It is common knowledge that Shah Rukh Khan is smarting under the poor showing of Dilwale. He is making snide remarks about its performance and even reimbursing some of the losses that distributors have suffered.
Some part of the blame for it has to go to Bajirao Mastani also releasing on the same date and while everyone thought the movie would find it hard to become a hit, the reality was the opposite.
Bajirao Mastani walked away with all the critical and commercial laurels while Dilwale is now recognised as a mistake by everyone, including Shah Rukh even if he does not spell it out openly.
It is therefore curious, with such an experience behind him, what on earth would compel him to go against the man who is churning out record-breaking blockbusters with every movie.
Next year when Shah Rukh’s movie Raees is hitting the screen the very same day Salman Khan’s Sultan is releasing. The date that they clash only makes it worse because it is the week that coincides with Eid and that is a time when Salman unfailingly delivers his biggest blockbuster.
So, it would be a good idea to ask just what exactly is Shah Rukh up to. Especially since it comes after what happened to Dilwale, which shows that his stock is not doing very well in the market.
Salman, on the other hand, has just had a huge blockbuster in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. Recently, however, there were news reports that suggested that wiser sense had dawned on Shah Rukh and the release date of Raees had been postponed to avoid a clash with Sultan. It was sparked off by the tweet of a trade analyst and magazine editor who said he had confirmation of it. There must have been quite a few sighs of relief in Bollywood at this news given that in recent history no one remembers movies of any of the three Khans clashing and, given their influence and power, it would have created enormous stress on minor players like theatre owners and distributors.
But it now turns out that the news was not true after all. Because the producer of Raees soon tweeted, ‘Some people spreading Rumours about #Raees release being moved.. Like I said RUMOURS’.
He however also told the media that there were five months left for the release and anything could happen by then. It seems quite implausible for the two movies to release together, because such a move would be commercially disastrous. The question really is who will blink first.

Crisis hour
Things are not going so well for Katrina Kaif. Her personal life is going through a crisis following the break up with boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor. But even on the work front, fortune is not being too kind to Katrina.
She had just one release, Phantom, last year that bombed badly and she remained stuck behind Deepika Padukone in the race to be the leading actress in Bollywood. Deepika, meanwhile, further consolidated her position with a string of commercial and critical successes.
In 2016, Katrina has a couple of releases and could have hoped to catch up with Deepika. But her first movie of the year, Fitoor, an adaptation of Great Expectations, has turned out to be a flop.
Worse, her performance didn’t impress the critics, some of whom blamed the wooden acting of the lead pair for the debacle. The consensus seems to be that she is good when it comes to filling the commercial elements of a Bollywood movie, like dance, glamour, etc but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of acting, she is just not any good.
Meanwhile, her next film for this year is Jagga Jasoos, with ex-boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor and its future is uncertain since no one is sure whether the two will want to act together.
The unfixed date

You might not hear of Preity Zinta in connection to her movies, but she repeatedly makes news for an impending marriage. In November it was heard that she would tie the knot in January with her US-based boyfriend, a finance professional.
January came and went but the marriage did not happen. And then this month once again the rumours raised their heads again and there were reports that the date had been finalised and it would be in the middle of February. But this one too has turned out to be untrue.
Preity took to Twitter to clarify with these tweets: ‘Can you leave my marriage announcement to me pls. AFTER ALL ITS MY LIFE. TILL THEN LEAVE ME ALONE. Grrrrrrrrrr !’ and  ‘Am seriously fed up with all the speculation about my personal life ! The media really knows how to ruin things. THIS NEEDS TO STOP !’.
But you have still not heard the last of it because the same newspaper, which ran the rumour, had one more item on it, this time claiming that the marriage is happening in April in Los Angeles.

New limits

Till Prem Ratan Dhan Payo last year, Sonam Kapoor’s career was in the doldrums. She was piling up flop after flop and many of them were in heroine-oriented movies which meant that she was directly responsible for its fate.
And then she finally got a big hit in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo. But it was a Salman Khan movie and no one gives the heroine any credit when he is around.
Last week, however, with the release of Neerja, Sonam received something that she rarely gets — rave reviews by critics. Her role is of the airhostess Neerja Bhanot who saved the lives of over 300 passengers in a plane that had been hijacked in 1986 but sacrificed her own life in process.
Before the movie released, many thought that Sonam, as Neerja, just didn’t have it in her for a role like this, considering that many of her earlier heroine-centred movies were very ordinary. But she seems to have pulled one out of the bag this time and some reviews even said that this was the best performance of her career.

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