SPLIT WIDE OPEN! Producers of ' Kedarnath', Abhishek Kapoor and Prernaa Arora locked in a bitter battle!

Ever since its announcement, Sushant Singh Rajput and Sara Ali Khan’s Kedarnath has been in the news. This is but natural because this intense love story is the launch vehicle of Amrita Singh and Saif Ali Khan’s attractive daughter Sara, who is being seen as one of the future forerunners in showbiz.

However, now, there’s a big twist in the tale. The two producers — Abhishek Kapoor (Gattu), who is also directing the tragic love story, and KriArj Entertainment (Prernaa Arora and Arjun N Kapoor’s company) have decided to part ways, reportedly, due to irreconcilable differences.

Says a source close to the director, “Though the two production houses had collaborated on Abhishek’s ambitious project, the latter is not a part of the film anymore.” One hears that reportedly, due to default of payments and lack of transparency, Abhishek has decided to close the fairly new association.

The film’s first schedule has been completed and Gattu had announced that Kedarnath will hit the screens on December 21, the same day as Shah Rukh Khan’s Zero. But KriArj didn’t want to clash with the superstar, and that led to a lot of disagreement between Prernaa and him. And now, this lack of transparency theory seems to be the final nail in the coffin. What needs to be seen now is which studio will replace KriArj and invest in the project. From what we hear, Gattu is already in talks with as many as three studios.

When we reached out to Prernaa for her side of the story, she chose not to comment. But, Girish Johar, one of her senior-most executives spoke to After Hrs. Girish said, “Every story has two sides. Please listen to our side. Abhishek wasn’t able to keep his end of the bargain on most counts. It was he who breached the agreement first. He was to finish a major chunk of the film at Kedarnath in October 2017. However, when the unit returned, we realised that this commitment was not fully met. There was a lot of wastage.”

One also hears from an insider that Abhishek was reportedly demanding Rs 40 crores from KriArj for the satellite, digital and music rights. When it was pointed out to him by his partner that this demand was unreasonable, he allegedly lost his cool.

It is being suggested that the director of Fitoor actually got abusive with Prernaa over the phone. And it seems that she then felt the need to get out of this abusive association. He also had an open fight with her when he tweeted, “To all my friends in the media, #kedarnath is on schedule for 21 st dec 2018 #jaibholenath (sic),” when she suggested that Kedarnath should not clash with Shah Rukh’s Zero.

Be that as it may, Johar further added, “We were game to giving in to reasonable demands as far as the production goes. However, we are not keen on throwing our money into a well. We needed to see the way our money was being used. Unfortunately, the movie is already over-budget after the first two schedules itself. And, we were actually in the process of sorting things out. However, if Abhishek has decided to move on, we would like to state on record that we are not at fault. You must know the why and why-not of a situation before coming to any conclusion.’’