BOMBAY TIMES (September 3, 2016)

Your guess is as good as ours. It's Kamaal R Khan (KRK), who has managed to rake up a storm again. And this time, he has created an ugly situation for filmmaker Karan Johar and actor-filmmaker Ajay Devgn. Ever since the teaser of KJo's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (ADHM) released earlier this week, KRK has been taking digs at Ajay's Shivaay. Incidentally, both the films clash at the box office this Diwali. If the two films fighting for equal screens is not enough, a battery of unwarranted tweets by KRK have only fuelled the fire further.

Ajay has issued a statement alleging that KRK was paid Rs 25 lakh by Karan to praise the teaser of his directorial, ADHM. The actor-filmmaker also released an audio clip, which is apparently a conversation between his business partner Kumar Mangat and KRK. In the recorded conversation, after being quizzed about abusing Shivaay and praising KJo, KRK reportedly confessed, “I have been paid Rs 25 lakh by Karan.“ When Mangat offered to pay, KRK responded that Ajay didn't reply to him on his birthday and added, “I will abide by the producer's wishes in the future.“

In his statement, Ajay said, “I have been a part of the Indian film industry for the past 25 years and have been associated with over 100 films. My father was a professional action director and I have an emotional connection with this industry. It therefore pains me to see that people like Kamaal R Khan are holding the film industry to ransom by spreading negativity about films to extort money from producers. It is very sad that people from our own industry are supporting such elements and spoiling the ethos of the film industry. I would strongly demand that this be thoroughly investigated by competent authorities to clarify if Karan Johar was indeed involved in this.“

On his part, Karan didn't want to dignify KRK's claims or comments. The filmmaker's team maintains that the entire controversy is baseless.

On September 1, KRK tweeted, “Let me clear it. Karan Johar has never paid me or asked me to bash #Shivaay n you can hear it in the tape. I said 25 lakhs to avoid Kumar.“ Well, should we call this a bad cover-up? And what is this hullbaloo all about then? Probably, just some more mileage for KRK. Even in the past, the industry has fielded plenty of issues because of his callous statements. Most recently, Vikram Bhatt and producerwriter, Kamaal R Khan got into a fight over social media when the director slammed a defamation notice to KRK for false allegations. All of it started when Khan personally attacked Bhatt when he reviewed his film '1920 London' and went on to rant on Twitter about him and the film's actress Meera Chopra. This distastefulness of his tweets led Bhatt to move to court. Vikram had also launched an online petition to get Kamaal off Twitter. However, this led to Khan apologising to Vikram Bhatt and the other actresses he targetted on social media.

A look at KRK's last tweet below explains the point we're trying to make. He's the one afterall, that is walking away with free publicity, while creating bad blood and bitterness amongst the real brands of Bollywood.

It's about time the industry stops taking cognizance of such views, opinions and comments ­ on record or off the record.


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KRK's comment has landed him and two big releases in an unsavoury online blitzkrieg
Avinash Lohana and Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 3, 2016)

It's still two months for Diwali but the firecrackers have already started exploding thanks to two Bollywood biggies whose films will be clashing at the box-office on the festive weekend. When Karan Johar's romantic drama, Ae Dil Hai Mushkil was pitted against Ajay Devgn's action thriller Shivaay, trade know-alls had anticipated the battle to take an ugly turn. It happened before anyone expected.

Late on Thursday, Ajay fanned the fire with a tweet. "Hear what self proclaimed no. 1 critic and trade analyst Kamaal R Khan has to say," he wrote sharing with it an audio clip of a phone conversation between KRK and his business associate, Kumar Mangat, in which the self-styled film critic inadvertently let slip to Mangat that he'd been paid Rs 25 lakh to launch a smear campaign by KJo against Ajay's upcoming film.

Ajay followed up the expose with a carefully worded statement which surprisingly mentioned his fellow filmmaker by name, thereby breaking the decade-old Bollywood code of omerta. He stated, "It is very sad that people from our own industry are supporting such elements and spoiling the ethos of the film industry. I would strongly demand that this be thoroughly investigated by competent authorities to clarify if Karan Johar was indeed involved in this." His wife Kajol, KJo's longtime bestie and the leading lady of several of his films upped the ante by retweeting Ajay's audio clip, captioning it, "Shocked."

Immediately after the expose, KRK crowed on Twitter that Ajay must think of him as, "a powerful no.1 critic who can harm his film" and boasted that both films had got free publicity worth millions using his name and the power of "The Brand KRK".

The next morning however, cockiness gave way to damage control and the former Bigg Boss contestant insisted that KJo had never paid him and he'd told Mangat that he had received the Rs 25 lakh to get him off his back as he was calling him repeatedly.

Trade analyst Komal Nahta was quick to question the veracity of KRK's claims, pointing out that he is "someone who can be bought for Rs 25 and paying him Rs 25 lakh is too much... He is too cheap to be taken seriously. He is not even a journalist so why waste words and time on him?"

Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri groused that such media-made clashes create unnecessary hype and result in middlemen taking advantage. "KRK is the one who got caught but many critics demand money. This is not a business of writers, directors and producers anymore, it's all about middlemen, fashion designers, hairdressers and marketing," he raged, adding that this is why film studios are shutting down. "In the next couple of months, I predict a lot of mud-slinging. Slowly, the truth will come out about who takes how much and how Rs 100-crore projects get approved. Everyone wants to kill KRK at the moment because he is small fry."

The "small fry", meanwhile, called the press to his residence where he said that Mangat and he had collaborated on two films, Aatma and Alone, and spoke on the phone every three days and met once a week. "Being a close friend, I didn't expect him to record our conversation. I thought he was saying that since I'm his friend I should favour his film and not KJo's. But why would I do that if I liked something? I liked Shivaay's first trailer and said good things about it too, and Kumar Mangat had thanked me. But I didn't like the next one and I said so," he asserted.

Reiterating that he hadn't taken any money from KJo, KRK argued, "Why would he pay me? Since Kumarji is a close friend and was putting pressure on me, I had to use KJo's name as an excuse and say that I took Rs 25 lakh from him to favour his film (favour not review). I don't deny that I take money to promote films. I run a website and have to pay salaries of 15 people. I took money from One Night Stand, Shorgul, Desi Kattey and Teraa Suroor but I don't review the movies I promote."

Trade analyst Amod Mehra calls KRK a "dangerous quack" and says that if he were in KJo's shoes he'd sue him. "It's time these so-called reviewers are exposed because they not only talk bad about a film before release, but declare flop films as hits by accepting money. I can vouch for the fact that some of our stars have these so-called reviewers on their payroll. Success and failure are being manipulated. Any clash is bad for the business as both parties end up losing money, with the weaker film losing more."

In 1990, when Aamir Khan's Dil and Sunny Deol's Ghayal clashed, no one thought of it as a war. Both films became superhits. That's an oft-quoted example industry folks cite even a quarter of a century later. What they fail to underline is that a lot has changed since. The stakes are higher, reputations are made and maligned every Friday, the number of films being produced has gone up and so have the monies. Budgets have escalated but profit margins are diminishing, particularly with star-studded bonanzas. That's why two Diwali dhamakas have faced-off with much sound and fury, be it SRK's Om Shanti Om and SLB's Saawariya, SRK's Mohabbatein and Sanjay Dutt's Mission Kashmir, SRK's Jab Tak Hai Jaan and Ajay's Son of Sardar, to name a few.

Producer Ratan Jain who has made films like Khiladi and Baazigar in the past, believes that both these films will perform well. However, he is quick to add that "somebody taking money to declare a film as good or bad is not going to influence the audience's verdict".

Just a few months ago, KRK in his review of 1920: London had alleged that Vikram Bhatt had fraudulently taken money from his producers and even sent his heroine, Meera Chopra, to them as a favour. An enraged Vikram had launched a scathing attack on him on the social media, also pulling him up for his derogatory tweets on actresses, and threatened him with legal action. After a war of words, KRK had publicly apologised to Vikram and the industry.
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Sting call to Twitter troll exposes rift between Karan Johar, Ajay Devgn ahead of Diwali clash
MID-DAY (September 3, 2016)

The impeding Diwali box office clash between Ajay Devgn’s Shivaay and Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil just got murkier. On Thursday, Ajay tweeted the audio clip of a conversation — reportedly between Shivaay’s co-producer Kumar Mangat and Twitter troll Kamaal R Khan — where the latter is heard saying that KJo paid him R 25 lakh. This is in response to Mangat’s query as to why he was tweeting positively about Johar’s film and writing negative comments about Shivaay. The clip, however, is yet to be verified.

Ajay issued a statement demanding investigation to find if Johar had actually paid KRK. “I have been part of the Indian film industry for the past 25 years and have been associated with over 100 films. It pains me to see that people like Kamaal R Khan are holding the film industry to ransom by spreading negativity about films to extort money from producers. It is very sad that people from our own industry are supporting such elements and spoiling the ethos of industry,” he said.

KRK, on his part, denied taking money from KJo. At a press conference yesterday, he claimed that Ajay was pulling off a publicity stunt by using his name. Earlier, he had tweeted, “Karan Johar has never paid me or asked me to bash # Shivaay n you can hear it in the tape. I said Rs 25 lakh to avoid Kumar. Ajay, Kumar offered me money to bash AeDilHaiMushkil as he is offering in the tape also but I refused. I told them that I will do it free (sic).”

Ajay, however, scoffed at KRK’s comments and said, “KRK is contradicting himself in explanations about what he has said in the recording and what we heard in his postured press conference. He has not denied that it was his voice in the recording and he is now making excuses and contradicting himself. It is now for the people to decide. I have never in my life spoken to or met this man.”