The age of the “bulletproof” Bollywood A-lister has finally hit a wall and its name is probably a spreadsheet. Now, Don 3’s exit of Ranveer Singh has gone from being a ‘creative difference’ to a straight-up payback. Excel Entertainment is putting its foot down: the outfit is reportedly sending Ranveer a ₹40 crore invoice for all the ‘pre-production nonsense’ the team had already shelled out on while having him on board. This is a bombshell that has thrown the industry into shock & has tagged a hefty price tag on the overall overhead costs for the production and pre-production that Farhan Akhtar’s team had greenlit assuming that Singh was good to go.
Not surprisingly, Ranveer’s camp is telling everyone that he had to bail because the script was going nowhere. They say that if Farhan Akhtar’s team couldn’t get a working version of the script out, then why on earth should the actor shell out money for the ‘mistakes’ of the producers? It’s a stalemate that has already claimed its first set of victims – the crew. Excel’s recent move included laying off department heads, telling action choreographers and cinematographers to put 2026 in their diaries to start looking for work elsewhere – that’s how fierce the crunch is in Mumbai. An indefinite delay is usually the kiss of death for a production.
The Producers Guild of India has been somewhat reluctantly acting as the mediator here. The emergency meeting on Friday reportedly ended in a right old argument, with Ritesh Sidhwani on one side and Ranveer’s reps on the other – they just couldn’t reach a resolution. But if Excel manages to whittle down even a fraction of that ₹40 crore, that’s a massive precedent for the whole industry. It basically means every Memorandum of Understanding is now a high-risk gamble for stars who have always called the shots when it comes to when a project starts or stalls.
For the time being, Don is no longer the cinema giant that we all thought it was – it’s now shaping up to be a cautionary tale about just how sharp the producers can be when it comes to money. Meanwhile, fans are off busily speculating if someone like Ranbir Kapoor or even a comeback SRK can step in to fill those shoes. But nobody is going to be handed those shoes until the ₹40 crore ghost is finally laid to rest. Excel is far more interested in wasting no more cash on this movie that doesn’t even exist than in finding a new Don to play the lead.
Source: Variety India
About the Author
