John Takes On Akshay Kumar Again

In  2018  John Abraham  decided he will release his  patriotic film Satyamev Jayate(which, come to think  of it, stopped being  patriotic at its title)  on the same day as his friend Akshay Kumar’s  Gold, a rousing flag-waving sports  film about  the  hockey team that got India its first Olympian  gold medal.

 Though Akshay laughed  off  John’s  eleventh-hour  presence  in a slot that has over the years become synonymous  withAkshay and his patriotic  cinema, we can  safely say now that the two actors can  no longer be considered friends.

And here’s why. A  year later John is  on to the same game-plan. His true-life action film Batla House  will be released  during the  Independence Day week alongside Akshay Kumar’s space adventure Mission Mangal.

 With this the second  Independence Day salvo with both , John has thrown an open  challenge at his Garam Masala  co-star: the patriotic slot  doesn’t belong to Akshay Kumar alone.

 While neither actor was  available comment on this impending patriotic clash in August 2019, a source  very close to MangalMission described John’s  entry  into the August 15 as  childishly harmful. “We all know clashes at  the  boxoffice are  not  good news at all . One  or the  other  film is bound to suffer. What is John trying to  prove? I think he has always  wanted to model  his career on Akshay. This is his chance of proving himself.”

 In  all fairness every  actor has  the  right to choose whichever Friday he wants for the release of his film. In 2018  both Akshay’s Gold and John’s Satyamev Jayate did well. We  can only hope for the same fate for Mangal Mission and Batla  House in  2019.