Will Deepika Padukone’s presence in ‘Race 2′ help or hurt the film?

 

After much prodding by the governing body CINTAA and possible legal consequences after her walk out of Race 2, Deepika is now back in the film, but not without some starry terms and conditions. Will producer Ramesh Taurani have to play it safe and comply with these? Will he have to agree, since he is finding it difficult to get dates from other super-busy actors he may want as replacements for the leggy lady?

After shooting for Ramesh Taurani’s upcoming Race 2 Deepika Padukone chose to walk out of the project claiming that it had wasted her dates and the schedule was being overstretched. Taurani, on the other hand, claimed that Deepika shunned the film with the excuse of working in a Hollywood project and deceived the producer by signing on for Rajnikath’s mega-movie Kochadaiyan. The producer therefore filed a complaint with CINTAA (Cine and TV Artist Association) against Deepika saying that the actor was causing heavy losses to the production by her walkout. Dippy has already shot a few scenes with Sanjay Dutt and Saif Ali Khan and those would have to be re-filmed if the producer opted for a replacement. Keeping the urgency of the issue in mind and the time being wasted over the controversy, CINTAA arranged a meeting to resolve the issue.

As a result, Deepika has been asked to adjust her dates to fit Taurani’s film in to her schedule. The association has asked the warring parties to revert with their respective solutions. But, much to the dismay of the other Race 2 actors, both Taurani and Deepika refused to mellow and that has sparked off a heated debate. When Deepika tried to defuse the situation by hugging Taurani, we learned that the producer did not reciprocate too warmly since he was mighty upset with Deepika’s unprofessional behaviour. Now even if Taurani gets a new lead actor, it’s not a win-win situation for the producer because he will have to start from scratch to redo scenes already shot. For Deepika, the damages Taurani may ask her to cough up would be very high. Hence the compromise.
But if she has to stay in the film, the 26-year-old has laid down a few conditions. Deepika will not change dates now and will not allot fresh dates to Race 2. She has requested Taurani and director duo Abbas-Mustan to not work with middlemen, but speak to her directly. Her third condition is that she will be granted the liberty to work with her own set of designers, hair stylists and make-up experts. The actress also wants the filmmakers to consult her on the release date of Race 2; this, because she wants no misunderstandings during the promotional phase of the film. And in case of a foreign schedule, the actress wants to be informed a month in advance. A little birdie tells us that Taurani tried approaching Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor as replacements, but given the former’s busy schedule for Krrish 3 and Kareena’s packed calendar for the year, it would not have be easy to rope in a new actor, given the current situation. In all this hullabaloo, we heard that there were very cold vibes between Deepika and her Race 2 co-stars Saif Ali Khan and John Abraham at David Dhawan’s son Rohit Dhawan’s recent wedding in Goa. Now how this will affect the final product that will be Race 2? We have to wait and watch!

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