Running out of Patience

Running out of Patience • Save the Date • An Odd Couple Done Apart

No one was more excited than Kareena Kapoor at the prospect of reuniting with her Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham co-star Hrithik Roshan for Agneepath director Karan Malhotra’s Shuddhi, but it appears that this casting coup may be jinxed after all. According to sources close to the actress, Kareena has spoken to the film’s producer and her good friend Karan Johar to explain that she’s a little tired of waiting around for Hrithik to allocate dates to the project.

Originally scheduled to begin filming in December 2013 after the release of Krrish 3, Shuddhi’s start date was moved when Hrithik was reportedly coerced by his Bang Bang! producers to wrap their film before moving on to any new projects. Fair enough too, considering the production schedule of the Knight & Day remake has been in a tizzy since Hrithik first went in for brain surgery in July last year, and then put all other work on hold to focus on the release of Krrish 3.

With no concrete start date for Shuddhi in sight, Kareena has apparently told Johar that she can’t possibly sit around idly until Hrithik decides to commit dates to the film. She’s already signed Dev Benegal’s film opposite Farhan Akhtar, and Rohit Shetty’s Singham 2 opposite Ajay Devgn, and doesn’t know how she can participate in a 160-day schedule of Shuddhi while those films are underway.

So although she hasn’t bowed out of the film, she’s indicated to everyone concerned that there’s a good chance she may not be able to work on Shuddhi after all—if those dates overlap with the ones she’s committed to her two other films. Nobody could be more disappointed than she herself about the possibility that she’ll have to wait still longer to make another movie with Hrithik.

Anurag Kashyap is reportedly hopping mad at Aamir Khan and the makers of P.K. for blindsiding him by shifting their release from June 2014 to Christmas 2014 without so much as keeping him in the loop.

Kashyap had already blocked 25 December as the release date of his ambitious Ranbir Kapoor starrer Bombay Velvet.

Turns out Kashyap had already been toying with the idea of moving from his December release date when he learnt that Aamir was eyeing a Christmas release for his latest. He is believed to have got in touch with P.K. director Rajkumar Hirani only days before they made the announcement to check if they were indeed moving their release. Kashyap apparently requested Hirani to allow him to announce Bombay Velvet’s changed release date before Hirani and Aamir announced P.K.’s shift to Christmas, so that it wouldn’t come across as if Kashyap was shifting his release in fear of being crushed by the Aamir Khan behemoth.

Another romance appears to have bitten the dust. It seems like only yesterday that this young film director and this celebrated author began seeing each other. They first caught the media’s attention when they showed up together for the wedding celebrations of a casting director in Delhi last November, where they did little to hide their mutual affection. Around the same time, they attended a literary fest in Mumbai, again looking very much in love.

Despite the fact that the author lived in Delhi and the filmmaker in Mumbai, and the significant age difference between the two, friends say they were perfectly compatible and made the most of their time together. The author, who is currently hosting a show on television, made regular trips to Mumbai, and the filmmaker began traveling frequently to Delhi too.

But now insiders are saying the couple has split. And that the long-distance nature of their relationship may be the cause of their break-up. Others insist it is the fact that they come from such different worlds. The filmmaker, who delivered a big box-office blockbuster last year, is close friends with his superstar leading man, and counts big names in Bollywood as his inside circle. The author, meanwhile, moves in erudite Delhi circles, and couldn’t be more out of place at a filmi party.

About The Author

Rajeev Masand

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