Producers part ways over Sushant Singh Rajput-Sara Ali Khan's Kedarnath. Is Shah Rukh Khan to be blamed?

There is a major battle of egoes going on in Bollywood right now and it has something to do with Kedarnath. The ambitious project, handled by director Abhishek Kapoor (Rock On, Kai Po Che and Fitoor), has Sushant Singh Rajput as the male lead while also serving as the much-hyped launchpad of Sara Ali Khan, the daughter of actors Saif Ali Khan and Amrita Singh. The movie was supposed to be produced by Prernaa Arora and Arjun N Kapoor's KriArj Entertainment, along with Abhishek Kapoor himself. But that doesn't look like the case anymore.

As per a report in DNA, the producers have parted ways over the project due to irreconcilable differences (read...huge fight!).  In the same report, a source close to the project revealed to the publication, “Though the two production houses had collaborated on Abhishek’s ambitious project, the latter is not a part of the film anymore.”

So what happened here? Well, a lot of blame games over the default of payments and the apparent lack of transparency in how things are being handled about the project. And Shah Rukh Khan, or rather his upcoming movie Zero, could play a factor in the tiff as well.

If you are aware, Kedarnath is supposed to come out on December 21 which also happens to be the release date of Zero as well. Prernaa Arora didn't want that to happen and she even publicly went ahead and said that she would not want the movies to clash with each other. In fact, Prernaa and Shah Rukh Khan have also joined hands in co-producing Shahid Kapoor's Batti Gul Meter Chalu.

However, Abhishek Kapoor went against her wishes and tweeted out, “To all my friends in the media, #kedarnath is on schedule for 21 st dec 2018 #jaibholenath (sic).” This is when then real cracks began to show.

The report in DNA also mentions that Abhisek was also asking for Rs 40 crore from KriArj for satellite and music rights, which the latter found to be very unreasonable. Now that the deal is off, the director is looking for other studios to back him up for the project.

The publication got in touch with Girish Johar, one of KriArj's senior-most executives, who confirmed the split as he said, “Every story has two sides. Please listen to our side. Abhishek wasn’t able to keep his end of the bargain on most counts. It was he who breached the agreement first. He was to finish a major chunk of the film at Kedarnath in October 2017. However, when the unit returned, we realised that this commitment was not fully met. There was a lot of wastage.”

It was also hinted that the director had got abusive with Prernaa on the phone, which proved to be the last straw in the breaking off their association. Johar continued, “We were game to giving in to reasonable demands as far as the production goes. However, we are not keen on throwing our money into a well. We needed to see the way our money was being used. Unfortunately, the movie is already over-budget after the first two schedules itself. And, we were actually in the process of sorting things out. However, if Abhishek has decided to move on, we would like to state on record that we are not at fault. You must know the why and why-not of a situation before coming to any conclusion.’’

With so much drama, we have to wait and watch to see if Kedarnath makes it to its scheduled release date.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 13, 2018 11:52 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).