By Subhash K Jha
It seems there is more to Prakash Jha’s claim that Vidhu Vinod Chopra removed the trailer of Jha’s ‘Rajneeti’ than meets the eye.
While Prakash claims Vidhu Vinod felt threatened by and insecure enough about the trailer of ‘Rajneeti’ to have it removed from ‘3 Idiots’, the Chairman of Reliance Big Pictures (who are the distributors of ‘3 Idiots’) Amit Khanna says they had never committed to Jha to show the trailer.
“Whom in our company has Prakash Jha spoken to about the ‘Rajneeti’ trailer going into the prints of ‘3 Idiots’? He hasn’t spoken to me. And I am not aware of anyone at Reliance whom he has spoken to. How can there be any commitment on the screening of a trailer? It all depends on the paid advertisements that individual theatres have. We certainly made no such commitment to Prakash Jha.”
Adds Khanna, “We’ve released ‘3 Idiots’ with a record number of prints, 2000 in all. In fact December has been a very fruitful month for us at Reliance Big Pictures, first ‘Paa’ and now ‘3 Idiots’. Just goes to prove, quality products do have a strong market.”
The question is, if Reliance says it had never agreed to the screening of the ‘Rajneeti’ trailer with ‘3 Idiots’ why is Prakash Jha accusing Vidhu Vinod Chopra of feeling threatened and insecure of the response that the trailer got at some screenings of ‘3 Idiots’?
Jha maintains his trailer was a victim of Chopra’s insecurities Jha who was recording the background music for his film in the US is left wondering where the trailer could be fastened now.
Speaking from London Prakash Jha says, “I suppose my trailer would be released independently in theatres, like any other trailer. In any case this was a 90-second teaser and not a full-fledged trailer.”
Prakash completely blames Vinod Chopra for the fiasco. “He’s very unpredictable. When we spoke about the trailer he sent me a sweet message about it. Then just days before the release of ‘3 Idiots’ my trailer had been pulled out. Apparently at the previews of ‘3 Idiots’ people just couldn’t stop talking about the ‘Rajneeti’ trailer after it was screen during interval.”
But the trailer, claims Jha, is very much part of the prints of ‘3 Idiots’ gone abroad.
“The prints had already left by the time Vinod Chopra decided to take my trailer out,” explains Prakash. “I don’t know why he was so insecure about my trailer since ‘3 Idiots’ carries such strong advance reports. I guess my ‘Rajneeti’ is the biggest multi-starrer in recent times. We do have Ajay Devgn, Arjun Rampal, Nana Patekar, Naseeruddin Shah and Manoj Bajpai. And we have the winning pair of Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif. I guess I’m lucky.”
