Shah Rukh and Amitabh Clash at Sanjay Dutt Book Launch

Dilip Kumar released a book on Sanjay parents — Sunil and Nargis Dutt. Present at the launch were Jackie Shroff, Govinda, Amitabh Bachchan, Prem Chopra, Karan Johar, Rajkumar Hirani, Farah Khan, SRK, Waheeda Rehman, Ramesh Sippy, Sunil Shetty, Akshaye Khanna and many other stars.

The event was hosted by Karan Johar while Dilip Kumar launched the book formally in Mumbai. Yes there was high tension as both SRK and Amitabh along with Amar Singh were present at the book launch.

The initial media response went to Amitabh but as soon as SRK made his late entry once the event started almost everyone forgot about Big B! Yes literally as everyone followed SRK whereever he went. Khan grabbed the opportunity to give the best pictures as well as bytes to tv channels.

So the big question did SRK and Big B meet each other? Yes they did and SRK only said adaab to Big B once and that's it. SRK even ignored Amar Singh and both the celebrities walked away without much interaction.

Chak De ! India is SRK's Biggest box office Earner Ever !

CHAK DE INDIA is simply relentless and in the week when it completed it's 50 days...

...it has stayed as one of the Top-3 preferred movies and went on to net close to 2 crores more.

Fabulous.

With mere 35% in the week when only Dhol and to an extent Dhamaal worked,CHAK DE INDIA has now crossed 60 crores at the box office.

If one doesn't take inflation into account, CHAK DE INDIA is Shah Rukh Khan's biggest box office earner ever as it has now crossed the 58 crores total of DDLJ while leaving KUCH KUCH HOTA HAI'S 50 crores way behind!

Joginder Tuteja, IndiaFM

'I don't want to marry Shah Rukh Khan'

Well...thats the title of actress Sofia Hayat's new film!

Actress Sofia Hayat, who starred in Channel 4’s Bollywood Star and in the upcoming film Unforgettable, has started work on a new film: I don’t want to marry Shah Rukh Khan. The film is her brainchild and is being developed with producer Christine Edwards.

Set in London and Mumbai, the story revolves around a British Asian girl who is fights for independence from her family and their plans to make her have an arranged marriage and conform to what they view as the ‘proper’ way to live.

Sofia says: “It’s about time a British film was made that shows what really goes on in some Asian families, without pussyfooting around the issues. A big part of the film revolves around my experiences as a young British Asian.”

Source: AIM Magazine

From SRK to Saif to John

Are you aware Shah Rukh Khan was the first choice for the principal role in Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking?

“He was keen to do the film. He even said he’d do it for his kids. But, for some reason, he couldn’t accommodate my film,” Anurag states.

Anurag remembers those days. “I was a dejected man. 'Paanch' was showing no signs of releasing and 'Black Friday' was held up. I was desperate to start a film. One night, I text-messaged all the top actors, telling them about the script of 'No Smoking'. The only person who responded to my message was John Abraham. He heard the script the very next morning and said ‘Yes’ instantly. He even said he’d get a producer to back this script,” the talented director reminisces.

Anurag continues, “In the meanwhile, Vishal Bhardwaj called to enquire if I’d be interested in starting a film for his banner. I narrated 'No Smoking' to him and he suggested Saif Ali Khan’s name. But I told him that I’d already committed to John. That’s how the ball started rolling.”

Amit Roy, IndiaTarget

SRK will start shooting for the film 'My Name Is Khan' next year

Shah Rukh Khan seems to have taken Chak De! India's Kabir Khan quite seriously.

After the stupendous success of the film, SRK and his best friend Karan Johar have decided to come together and make a film that will highlight the plight of Asian Muslims, post 9/11.


If sources are to be believed, the film has been tentaively named My Name Is Khan.


Shah Rukh will play a Muslim, who gets wrongly detained on a flight because of his last name, Khan. The authorities believe him to be a terrorist.


Unlike his earlier family dramas, Karan tries his hand at a more serious subject this time. More importantly, it looks like he has gotten over his 'K' fixation.

Kajol is expected to play SRK's leading lady.

SRK will start shooting for the film next year, after he completes Sivaji director Shankar's next, Robot, and Munnabhai director Rajkumar Hirani's next.


On an aside, Shankar had begun planning a film with a 'robot' protagonist some years ago, and wanted to cast Kamal Hassan in the lead role.

The actor was by then deep into the shooting of Abhay, for which in an excess of 'method' he had bulked up to grotesque proportions.

Creative differences also arose between Shankar and Kamal, leading to the former deciding to put the project on the back burner.

Shankar had initially toyed with the idea of casting Shah Rukh in Nayak, the remake of his own Tamil hit. At the time, the Khan in his eagerness to work with the director had promised bulk dates and all cooperation -- but Shankar did a rethink, and picked Anil Kapoor instead, reasoning that he didn't want a megastar in the lead for Nayak, as it would overshadow what he visualized as the story of an ordinary man raised to an extraordinary position.

The director has however always wanted to work with the reigning king of Bollywood, and Khan has reciprocated that sentiment. With Robot, both of them get their wish.

Source: Rediff News

SRK sends Hoax Messages to Farah Khan!

Website lets people send SMS or Short Message Sevice for mobile to moblile text messaging and make phone calls to anyone using any number they wish!

Mid-Day Mumbai,a daily newspaper, sent SMSes from Shah Rukh’s number to his close friend Farah Khan.

Farah Khan was all excitement when Shah Rukh Khan sent her an SMS that read: "Let's plan a big Idd bash this year."

Imagine her shock when Mid-Day called her up and told her that it was Mumbai's favourite afternoon daily and not the filmstar who had sent her the SMS. Mid-Day did it using a website that allows Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

"This is so scary. I got two messages from Shah Rukh's number and he hadn't sent any of them. People can use the service easily to create misunderstandings," said Farah after.
Mid-Day told her how it had pulled this off.

Patanjal Vyas (20), from Ahmedabad, was eager to show the world the vulnerability of mobile networks.

"I realised sometime back that anyone's number could be used to make calls using VoIP. It's like creating a fake profile on the Internet. If this service is exploited, marriages could end up in divorces and a stock market crash could be triggered if a wrong message is sent from a leading brokerage firm CEO's number," said Patanjal.

The possibilities are endless and the consequences disastrous. Patanjal is not a hacker and he is not doing this for any publicity. All he wants to do is alert the cellular service providers. He has already sent warnings to all service providers in the country. "Except Airtel no one has bothered to respond,"said Patanjal. Mid-Day is deliberately not revealing the website's IP address.

Cellular firms deny internet threat:

He has also informed the telecom ministry about the loopholes but nothing has been done. Vyas is planning to file a PIL if no action is taken soon.

When Mid-Day crosschecked with the service providers, they dismissed the threat saying it plain speculation.

"I can't comment on such speculative things, I have got meetings and I have got things to do," said Harit Nagpal, Vodafone's director for marketing and new services.

Reliance, Airtel and BPL spokespersons said that they were unaware of such loopholes.
"I think this is a b****y con, I don't believe this, someone is trying to market his product," said T V Ramchandran, director-general of Cellular Operators Association of India, an organisation of GSM operators.

Union telecom secretary

D Mathur was livid when we quizzed him over the issue. "I will not comment on this. What do you want me to do?"

Anti-terrorist squad chief

K P S Raghuvanshi, however, was more forthcoming when he said that his department is aware of such technologies. "We are aware of this and we are confident of nabbing anyone who misuses this," said Raghuvanshi.


How SRK's SMS was sent to Farah:

Mid-Day used Voice-over Internet Protocol
l VoIP sends voice information in digital format in discrete packets instead of using the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network.
- Upala (Mid-Day journalist) is trying to talk to me about walking the ramp. What to do?
- Let's plan a big Idd bash this year

Krishna Kumar,Mid-DayMumbai

Shah Rukh Khan to endorse DishTV

The Essel group-promoted Dish TV – the country’s first direct-to-home (DTH) platform – appears to be pulling all stops for a pitched battle in the rapidly-growing DTH market, with big names such as Bharti and Reliance ADAG set to enter the fray.

DishTV has roped in Shah Rukh Khan to endorse its brand in a multi-crore deal. A formal announcement of the same is expected shortly. DishTV’s competitor, Tata Sky, had used another Bollywood hottie, Hrithik Roshan, extensively earlier this year to promote its services during the ICC Cricket World Cup.

Though DishTV officials declined to comment on the deal with SRK, the industry ranks him as charging one of the highest fees per brand. Sources say Shah Rukh charges anywhere between Rs 5 crore and Rs 7 crore per endorsement. Sources say Tata Sky may have lapped up Hrithik cheaper at Rs 2-3 crore.

DishTV, which has been around for about three years, leads the DTH space with a subscriber base of close to 2.2 million. The one-year-old Tata Sky, on the other hand, has a customer base of one million. By 2012, the market for DTH services is expected to escalate to 25-30 million, from about 5 million currently. However, industry experts say the business requires long gestation periods for DTH operators to break even on their investments.

For Shah Rukh, DishTV will be yet another brand to his long endorsement list. His endorsements include Diageo, Bel Monte Suitings, Emami’s Fair & Handsome men’s fairness cream, Hyundai, Omega watches, Pepsi, Compaq, besides socially relevant campaigns such as for Pulse Polio and AIDS control.

Ratna Bhushan & Moinak Mitra, TheEconomicTimes

SRK & Big-B decide to finish the delayed 'Bhootnath'

Ravi Chopra can now heave a sigh of relief. The two superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, responsible for the delay of 'Bhootnath', have finally decided to complete the film and will come face to face to face the camera soon. The two will be shooting together for the film and will finish their parts before the middle of this month.

Bhootnath', which went on the floors on October 18th of last year, had been endlessly delayed due to date problems, which were generated due to the cold war between Big B and SRK. The film, which was scheduled to release in May of this year, is now rescheduled for early next year.

Source: IndiaTarget

Memoirs of SRK's Love Legend Veer Zaara

A book review of 'They said it...Memoirs of A Love Legend Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara' by Faridoon Shahryar.

Main qaidi number saat sau chyasi
Jail ki salaakhon se bahar dekhta hoon
Din Mahine saalon ko yug mein
Badalte dekhta hoon…
Main qaidi number saat so chyasi…

It goes without saying that the above lines recited by a tired-n-forlorn Shah Rukh Khan in Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara elicited the sigh of goose pimples. But did you know that this poignant poem reeking of mithaas of Punjabi chaas was completed by scriptwriter Aditya Chopra only an hour before the actual shot was being canned on an ornate Sharmishta Roy set of a Pakistani Court? Well, all this and many more details have been chronicled in a lavish coffee table book They said it…The Memoirs of A Love Legend Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara.

The first thing that grips you as you rustle your way through this heavy book is the brilliant still photographs of Ishika Mohan. The rustic charm of the lodi song, SRK, Preity sharing moments of togetherness before a movie camera, Yash Chopra explaining a shot to cinematographer Anil Mehta in the sarson ka khet, Chopra attentively listening to a Saroj Khan dance move on a huge set while the dusk is setting in, the rooftop shots of the court and the jail, the lilting colors of flower beds wedded to mountains….there are too many wonderful pictures piecing together the movie making experience and all of them have a story to tell.

The entire cast and crew has shared the experience of making Veer-Zaara. What is notable is that apart from big stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini, Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Rani Mukherji, Anupam Kher, Kirron Kher and Divya Dutta, there are notes written by almost each and everyone involved with the making of the film in any capacity whatsoever. But with so many people talking about one subject, there’s bound to be repetitions in choice of adjectives to praise the makers of the film. To be honest, beyond a point the sugar coated remarks can make a diabetic run for his doctor frantically.

Well, something that is unique about this book is that in a rare instance you get to read-and-see the grossly reclusive filmmaker Aditya Chopra (all you press people who’ve been using a single mug-shot of Visionary Chopra for a long time, it’s your chance to get a much more clear frame in this book). Aditya Chopra doesn’t give interviews though there are legends about him that he watches every Hindi film first day first show in Mumbai cinema halls. In a long time you actually get to know his mind as he shares the experience of working on the “most challenging” project of his career as a script writer. He writes that for the first time he consciously thought in Hindi/ Urdu as opposed to thinking in English (Would you believe it, he wrote Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Mohabbatein first in English and then translated them in Hindi). He admits there were many moments of doubts while writing the film but it paid off because of the end result. We quote what he writes at the end of his note to express his feelings more lucidly:

Months later I was having dinner with my parents at home and I casually asked my Dad that which was his personal favourite film out of all the films he had directed in forty five years. He said that for a long time it’s been Lamhe, but today I’m creatively most satisfied with Veer-Zaara. I just smiled and went back to eating, my parents didn’t know that I had just won the greatest award of my life. I was the writer of Mr Yash Chopra’s personal favourite film of his career.

Veer-Zaara may be Yash Chopra’s personal favourite, but there are many who’ll disagree with that. Even when the film released, the references of DDLJ in the film were hard to miss. People still remember Chopra’s classics like Waqt, Deewar and Kabhi Kabhi with open eyed amazement. Who can forget the timeless dialogue by Akhtar-ul-Imaan in Waqt where Rajkumar says, Chinai seth ye bachchon ke khelne ki cheez nahin hai, haath kat jaaye to khoon nikal aata hai. It was the first film that set the tone for lost-n-found theme in Hindi Cinema. The poetic tenor of Kabhi Kabhi and the razor sharp Deewar is a favourite of millions any day. Some say Lamhe was the last soul stirring film made by Yash Chopra, a film made without any compromises. Never mind….

Talking about the book there are many more interesting anecdotes and creative ideations that are noteworthy. The recreation of Madan Mohan’s music by his son Sanjiv Kohli is one such instance. Kohli, the CEO of Yashraj Films worked very hard on attempting to blend Yashraj style with his dad’s classical touch. He almost succeeded, though the choice of Lata Mangeshkar’s voice for all the female numbers is debatable. In the making of the music, Kohli merged the raw voice of his father the late Madan Mohan captured on 30 year old tapes with the voices of Veer-Zaara’s album creating a surreal feel.

Sound designer Anuj Mathur gave a small glimpse in Yash Chopra’s open attitude by agreeing to Sync Sound instead of the conventional ‘dubbing’ that the seasoned filmmaker had been used to. There are also echoes from the cast and crew of the film about the youthful ebullience of Chopra who in spite of being down due to an accident carried on, aided by crutches so that the film’s schedule doesn’t go topsy-turvy. Another piece of information that I found interesting was the role of script & design consultant Nasreen Rehman from Pakistan who taught Divya Dutta (amongst everybody else but it was Dutta who stole everyone’s heart with her delicious Punjabi accent) to speak Punjabi the way it is spoken in Pakistan. She also gave inputs to Sharmishta Roy on the sets and Manish Malhotra on the Pakistani clothes.

The latter half of this book is filled with quotes from people all over the world (Veer-Zaara was widely appreciated by Pakistanis as they were not the villains for once and even Germans and French related to the film perfectly). There are shots from the grand premiere of the film held in Mumbai with the who’s who of the film industry making all the ‘right’ noises.

They said it…The Memoirs of a Love Legend Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara is a wonderful coffee table book with some mesmerizing pictures and warm tales of hospitality, hard work and brotherhood. It talks about a film that is one of the biggest hits of this century that has healed hearts across borders. Go for it!

Rating: ***1/2

Faridoon Shahryar, IndiaFM

Shah Rukh Khan Vs Akshay Kumar

We are talking about the King,Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar.

Today one’s the Badshah of Bollywood and the other an ultimate Khiladi.

We are talking about superstars Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar, both formidable in their own right, genres and markets. While the two are best remembered together for their film almost a decade ago , Dil To Pagal Hai , they created magic once again in the more recent Heyy Babyy , when SRK made a guest appearance in the Akshay-starrer.

In turn, Akshay will be seen making a rare guest appearance in SRK’s upcoming Om Shanti Om . Insiders insist that they hit it off instantly. But while personally they may be on friendly terms, professionally the two stars are giving each other a tagdi takkar at the box-office overseas.

While SRK had become an instant rage in the overseas market with Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge , and has been numero uno ever since, Akki’s action star image failed to strike a note in the hearts of the overseas audience.

However, if the recent trade figures are anything to go by, Akshay’s emerging as the new star on the overseas circuit giving tough competition to the Khan brigade (Shah Rukh, Salman, Aamir and Saif) who have been ruling the roost so far. And with his recent spate of successes, Akshay’s begun a steady climb to the top and is fast catching up with the undisputed Baadshah.

Says trade analyst Taran Adarsh, Akshay’s certainly hot property in the overseas market today. His films have done extremely well both in India and abroad and box-office collections clearly prove that in the overseas market he’s one force to reckon with apart from Shah Rukh.

Sample this: Akki’s Heyy Babyy has grossed approximately Rs 5.58 crores in UK, as opposed to SRK’s Chak De which has grossed Rs 3.47 crores so far. Not only this, Heyy Babyy has also taken the biggest opening in the US this year and the biggest screen average (6,039 pounds) in the UK.

Agrees trade analyst Komal Nahta who says, There’s no doubt that Akki’s raced way ahead of a host of other actors in the overseas segment. But he’s quick to add that it’s too early to consider him a threat to SRK’s reign.

A film distributor reveals, SRK has so far been the untouched king in the overseas market. But though that is quite unlikely to change soon, Akki’s popularity abroad is soaring. His films are being lapped up by overseas distributors with ever-rising prices. Even his films like Dosti that have not done well here, have seen several houseful weeks abroad. So, that way he’s a superhit hero and has been consistent in giving hits.

Analysing the two superstar’s film graphs, Nahta observes that Akshay has done far too many films and has not maintained the exclusivity that’s been one of SRK’s strengths. SRK has been very choosy, doing only one or two per year, as opposed to Akshay. Because of that the success ratio of SRK increased manifold and shot him into the superstar league way earlier, explains Nahta.

But what needs to be considered here are the banners. While SRK made it big, under big banners, its only of late that Akshay’s started doing films under the bigger banners, adds Adarsh.

Box office apart too, the two not only endorse rival cola brands, but also suiting brands. And that’s not all while SRK endorses computers, Akshay endorses a gaming console. While Akshay’s doing away with his action image and doing more comedies and romantic fare, SRK’s geared up his body for some heavy duty action stuff.

Both have the solid backing of good friends and enjoy quite a loyalty among certain filmmakers. SRK has Karan Johar who’s reportedly named his next film My Name is Khan, on good pal highlighting him as the contemporary educated Muslim. Not to be outdone, Akki has been backed by Vipul Shah, who’s film Singh is King shows him as the quintessential Punjabi munda . In fact, many feel that the film was titled to announce his claim to the ‘King’ tag. Now whether the film really establishes his status as the King or not only time will tell.

Source: TimesOfIndia