New Delhi: Director Umesh Shukla of ‘OMG! Oh My God' fame has finally broken his silence on ‘being offered a sum of Rs 8 crore' by Aamir Khan and the producers of ‘PK' to stop the shooting of his film 2 years back.
Umesh Shukla told a leading daily that the reports of him being offered Rs 8 crore by the makers of PK are nothing but baseless rumours.
He said, “I don't know from where such baseless rumours have come up. This is nonsense. These (Aamir, Rajkumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra) are good people and they can never do such a thing. When you pick the subject of God, then similarities do come. Don't challenge the creativity of the film unnecessarily and make a big deal about it.”
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The story that was doing the rounds a few days back was that when Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra got to know that the storyline of Umesh Shukla's OMG: Oh My God was similar to PK, they along with Aamir had approached Umesh to have a discussion.
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The report further quoted a source saying that OMG: Oh My God was still being shot when Aamir, Rajkumar and Vidhu offered Rs 8 crore to Umesh to stop shooting the film. Reportedly Aamir denied saying, "There are 100 films of the same theme. It doesn't mean we are copying. And reports stating we tried paying off Umesh Shukla for stalling OMG: Oh My God are all lies."
While one would wonder about the similarity between these two films, sources say that there is indeed a connection between the two ventures.
“Abhijat Joshi, who co-scripted ‘PK' with Rajkumar Hirani, is the elder brother of playwright Saumya Joshi who works closely with Umesh Shukla, the director of ‘Oh My God' and long-running Gujarati play ‘Kanji Virudh Kanji' from which ‘Oh My God' is adapted. In fact Saumya has written ‘102 Not Out', the film featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Paresh Rawal, that Umesh is directing in 2015. Apparently, Saumya had invited Hirani and Abhijat to see the play,” says the source, according to a report published in a leading website.
“They saw and were very impressed by ‘Kanji Viruddh Kanji'. They immediately began to plan a film on the merchandising of religion. But then they got to know that Umesh was shooting a film based on his own play. Immediately, the script plan was revised. That's how ‘PK' was born,” adds a source.
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But if we look at the details, ‘Oh My God!' released in 2012. That gave enough time to the makers of ‘PK' to change tracks and do something visibly different. In defense of the PK team, the source quips, “Raju and Abhijat just liked the idea of religion as a commercial enterprise and wanted to use it. The minute they got to know Umesh was making Oh My God, they changed tracks completely.”
