“What Is  Siddharth Malhotra Grumbling About?” Wonders R Balki About The Date Clash Of PadMan With Aiyaary

About the impending clash between R Balki’s PadMan and Neeraj Pandey’s Aiyaary,Aiyaary’s lead actor Siddharth Malhotra is quoted as saying, “Yes, it irritates, but now it’s too late. What can we do now? Look, we announced the date first. When PadMan makers unveiled their release date, we were gracious enough to shift our release date to avoid the clash….This situation could have been resolved earlier, people could have stuck to their dates, respecting others’ space. I was not expecting the makers of Pad Man to release their film with us, especially the second time. We thought we will get a solo release.”

PadMan director R Balki is exasperated and amused by Malhotra’s outburst. “I don’t know what he is so irritated about. We had to shift from the Republic day weekend to another date, to another Friday to make way for a film that has been troubled and needed release space much more urgently than we did. We moved on humanitarian grounds and not because we wanted to once again clash with Aiyaary. I thought that was  clear  to everyone.”

Balki also refutes Malhotra’s claim that Aiyaary announced  its release date first on January 26. “I’d like to gently correct Siddharth. We had announced  the release  of  PadMan  for Republic  Day before Aiyaary. We had no problem with Aiyaary coming in, later, during the same weekend.So now why do they have a problem with us coming on February  9? We are not coming with Aiyaary.We would come on February 9 regardless of  who is coming or not coming.”

Balki feels it’s about-time the film fraternity closed ranks . “Let’s  not fight over Friday one-upmanship. We should all find a way to co-exist . Only then can we  avoid  the  kind of attack that Padmaavat has to face. I don’t understand why Siddharth Malhotra should feel threatened by PadMan. Aiyaary and PadMan are two different entities.They  can’t be seen as competitors.”