Hrithik Roshan’s Super 30 will not clash with the Kangana Ranaut-Rajkummar Rao starrer Mental Hai Kya on July 26. In a statement released on Twitter, Roshan announced that he had requested producers Reliance Entertainment, Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment and Phantom Films to postpone the release to prevent the biopic from being “desecrated by yet another media circus.”
Roshan said in his statement, “I have decided to shift the release date of my film SUPER30 in order to save myself from the personal trauma and toxic mental violence this would cause.” The new date has not been announced.
The announcement comes two days after Balaji Motion Pictures denied suggestions that the release of its production Mental Hai Kya was deliberately brought forward to clash with Roshan’s film and milk the subsequent publicity. The date change was “purely for business prospects”, the production company claimed in a statement on Tuesday. Mental Hai Kya, which was previously targetting a June 21 release, is directed by Prakash Kovelamudi and written by Manmarziyaan screenwriter Kanika Dhillon.
Ranaut and Roshan had a public tiff in 2016 that involved the duo trading barbs, making personal attacks and issuing legal notices to one another amid murmurs of an affair gone sour.
“Over the past few years, to my utter dismay, I have been witness to a lot of us cheering and encouraging what was/is an open and blatant case of harassment,” Roshan’s statement read. “I must even now, wait patiently and silently for the collective consciousness of society to take cognizance of such matters in order to maintain our faith in the civility of our society. This unrelenting helplessness must end.”
Super 30 is based on mathematician Anand Kumar’s Super 30 programme, which coaches underprivileged students for the Indian Institute of Technology’s entrance examinations. The movie, which was initially supposed to be out in January earlier this year, got pushed in the wake of sexual harassment allegations against its director, Vikas Bahl. The filmmaker was dropped from the post-production process, and former production partner Anurag Kashyap was roped in instead. The movie will now be released without a director credit.
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