Balki: “Moving PadMan For Padmaavat Was The Least We Could Do For Them”

Akshay Kumar  won many hearts  within the film industry when at a join press conference with Padmaavat filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali on  Friday afternoon the PadMan star declared he  would not release PadMan alongside Padmaavat on January 25.

“It  was a decision taken almost instantaneously by all of us in the PadMan team whenSanjay Leela Bhansali and Viacom  18, the producers  of Padmaavat approached  us with the request that we  move. It didn’t take  us  a minute to agree to their request. It’s  the least we could do for a project that has  gone  through  so much. Padmaavat needs  the  Republic Day slot more than us.we don’t  mind moving ahead  by two weeks because we know whenever we come  we have a winning  project on hand,” says the PadMan director R Balki, showing  a deep solidarity with Bhansali and  Padmaavat.

Reasons Balki, “Sanjay Bhansali looked so  shaken and  troubled.  My heart reached  out to him. Isn’t it  about time we  in the film industry stopped projecting  an impression of a  house divided?  At  the end  of  the day all of us filmmakers belong to same fraternity. Of course we  have to be selfish about our own  film. But not at the expense  of  someone else’s film. We can’t say, ‘Usski  film gayi bhaad mein(to hell with their film)”. Because if  someone  else’s  film gets into trouble  we must remind ourself that the trouble  could befall our film also.”

 Balki is confident  about his film’s release date Feb 9. “PadMan is meant to start a debate on menstrual hygiene. Akshay Kumar’s last release Toilet: Ek Prem Katha  had  carried  forward an important debate on toilet amenities. But on  our case, the debate  on  menstrual hygiene  will be started with PadMan.No one talks about menstrual matters .  We didn’t want that debate to be caught in the crossfire of controversies. We would rather come  a little later than clash with a film which   desperately needs  to be released.”

Ends Balki,  “Padmaavat was destined come solo.  I hope it stands tall and I wish it glorious success.”