DNA (February 14, 2018)

The fall-out between Prernaa Arora’s KriArj Entertainment and Abhishek Kapoor’s Guy In The Sky Pictures is now widely known. Even before the dust has settled on their split, a reliable Bollywood trade source tells us that Abhishek aka Gattu, who is Ekta Kapoor’s first cousin, reportedly spoke to the television Czarina to come on board his work of art. Here, one must do a quick rewind. Ekta was the one who had committed to doing a movie with her filmmaker-brother Abhishek long before this whole Kedarnath thing was mooted. Unfortunately, she couldn’t do it and Abhishek joined hands with KriArj Entertainment and others to make this ambitious love story. Interestingly, Ekta kept her stake in the film.

The next development is this: when differences cropped up between Abhishek and Prernaa, the good-looking actor-turned-filmmaker allegedly reached out to his cousin (a second time over) asking her to come back on board and partner with him on the project.

Till the time of going to press, Ekta, apparently, hadn’t reverted because she is reportedly not keen to underwrite such a huge cost. And this film is being made on a lavish budget, despite it having a newcomer and a not-so-established star.

One hears that Abhishek has also approached another major studio that usually partners with leading filmmakers like Karan Johar and Sajid Nadiadwala. However, they too have not yet been able to come to any decision, especially because “there are too many loose ends.”

The third and most important development according to our source is Prernaa’s own attempt to take Kedarnath forward. It seems that the fiery, young producer was reportedly looking to tie up with Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment, asking them to become the major stakeholder in this film. Of course, this third angle looked like a weak one primarily because Kedarnath seems riddled with too many problems as of today. And whoever takes charge would first need to wipe the slate clean before starting over. And last but not the least, SRK himself has Zero, helmed by Aanand L Rai, scheduled to release on December 21. So, his company or rather a representative from his company has reportedly communicated to Prernaa that they are not interested in coming on board for this film.