MID-DAY (March 25, 2015)

Hollywood director John Woo, known as a major influence on the action genre, has sent a mail of appreciation to Rajkumar Hirani for his Aamir Khan-starrer PK. The film set a box office record with domestic collections of over Rs 340 crore.

The two had met at the Beijing International Film Festival last year, where they were both part of the jury, and spoken about each other’s work at length, says a source, adding: “When Hirani was in China for the launch of PK last month, he had sent a mail to John so that they could meet up. But since the latter was out of town, they could not catch up.”

Recently, Hirani got a pleasant surprise when John wrote him a long mail saying he had watched PK and “liked it a lot”.

“It was heartening to receive the letter from John. When we met last year, we discussed PK. I am glad that he liked the film,” says the filmmaker whose 2009 film 3 Idiots ran in Chinese theatres for more than four weeks.

John is best known for films like Broken Arrow (1996), Face/ Off (1997), Windtalkers (2002).