Zanjeer remake’s release postponed

The 'Zanjeer' remake has been in the news for one reason or the other ever since it was announced. The last we reported (TOI, date June 26) was that while decks had been cleared for both the Hindi and Telugu release, late Prakash Mehra’s son Amit Mehra, had been replaced by his brothers Sumeet and Puneet, as producers of the joint venture with Reliance Entertainment and Flying Turtle.
However, just when it looked like the film, starring Ram Charan Teja and Priyanka Chopra, would keep its date with the slated September 6 release, developments in the Hindi and Telugu film industry seem to suggest otherwise.
A source revealed that on Saturday, makers of the Telugu film Yevadu, also starring Ram Charan, postponed the movie by three weeks - from coming Friday to August 21, bringing it too close to Zanjeer 2.0.
Said the source, “It will be too much for Ram to have two of his films literally arriving back to back. And more than just the Hindi version, Ram also has to worry about Zanjeer’s Telugu version-Thoofan. It will be at all task for distributors and exhibitors to bring two of Ram’s films one after the other.”
On the Bollywood front too, with Yash Raj pushing ahead the release of ShuddhDesi Romance, the Zanjeerremake now has direct competition from the Sushant Singh Rajput-Parineeti Chopra starrer.
The source said, “Though that by itself isn’t a threat since Zanjeer is a much bigger film than the Maneesh Sharma-directed movie, it cannot be ignored either. Some rethinking may be required here.”
Director Apoorva Lakhia however sounded confident. “I can only talk about my film. This week, as many as 12 films released all over India. It’s impossible for any film to get a single release unless it features the big four or five actors. Zanjeer is definitely arriving on September 6,” he said.
By - Joginder Tuteja