Fearing controversy, film maker Karan Johar and director Siddharth Malhotra have snipped nine minutes of footage containing references to racist attacks on Indians in Australia, says a media report.
The ongoing racist attacks in Australia, which were initially depicted briefly in Karan Johar's and Siddharth Malhotra's We Are Family, have now been done away with.
The producer-director duo has decided to chop the entire nineminute-long section from the film, to avoid any kind of controversies around the topic.
Apparently, a section of the film showed the children being subjected to racial abuse in school. Our source said, “Nine minutes have been chopped from the film. Karan strongly felt that the scenes should be removed.”
Incidentally, the film has been shot in Australia and that is why Karan was keen to remove these particular scenes, so that people don't think that this angle has been used in the film to cash in on the controversy. Karan is a type of producer who would never invite trouble and would want to stay away from unwanted controversies,” adds the source.
Siddharth Malhotra, the director of the film, confirmed the news and said, “We had written the script around two years back and at the time there was never an issue as far as racism in Australia was concerned. There is a scene in the film where some Aussie boys call Kajol's son S*** Brown.
“This sequence leads to an altercation between Kajol and Kareena over how to respond to the kids. Arjun takes up the issue with the principal of the school and the principal assures that the kids would be punished as this won't be tolerated. Kajol also tells Kareena in no uncertain terms to stay out of it as she is the mother of these kids.
“The scenes were very vital as they established the friction between the two ladies and also the relationship between Kareena and the kids. There were also a couple of scenes where there were action sequences about how the kids get even with these Aussie kids.
“However we have chopped off all of these as we were of the opinion that it should not be highlighted. Karan and our editor Deepak Bhatia were also of the opinion that no one should think that we are cashing in on this issue through our film.
“Removing these scenes was not hampering the flow of the film and so they were deleted from the film. The scenes were vital but without them the soul of the film is still the same and that is a mutual decision we took.”
