After Parmanu, KriArj Entertainment loses out on Batti Gul Meter Chalu, Fanne Khan

KriArj Entertainment is currently going through a rough patch. After losing the legal battle to actor-producer John Abraham over Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran, the production house has been a dealt a double blow as it lost out on two of its other projects — Batti Gul Meter Chalu (BGMC) and Fanne Khan.

KriArj Entertainment was to co-produce the two films with T-Series. T-Series will now solely produce Batti Gul Meter Chalu, while it will co-produce Fanne Khan with ROMP (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra Productions).

T-Series head honcho Bhushan Kumar said in a statement, "I will now solely produce both, Batti Gul Meter Chalu (along with Shree Narayan Singh and Nitin Chandrachud) and Fanne Khan (also produced jointly by Rakeshji). We want to ensure both the films are shot as per the locked schedule. Both our directors Shree Narayan Singh (BGMC) and Atul Manjrekar (Fanne Khan) are set to take the project to its completion level. Batti Gul Meter Chalu starts shoot tomorrow, while Fanne Khan we just have two songs left to shoot [sic]."

While there was no reason given over the parting of ways with KriArj Entertainment, the rumours suggest that KriArj Entertainment had defaulted on payments.

Rajeev Tandon of ROMP (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra Productions) had earlier told Mid-Day that these issues would be taken care of.

While they didn’t comment on losing out the two films, KriArj Entertainment issued a statement that they would start afresh.

"We at KriArj Entertainment are happy to have two successful releases this year with Padman (February 2018) & Pari (March 2018) after the very successful Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. Bringing socially relevant and meaningful cinema to entertain audiences has always been our endeavour. With us being a relatively young production house both in terms of average age of the team as well as number of the years in the business, we have been very fortunate to have already made the kind of films that we have. At the same time we do think that this would be the right time to re-evaluate our strategy and set new goals for the future. With renewed zeal and positivity we want to better ourselves and strive harder to raise the bar to come with a fresh slate of films from June 2018," KriArj Entertainment said in a statement.

KriArj Entertainment has now lost out on four projects, including Kedarnath which was taken over by Ronnie Screwvala. A reliable source had told us that KriArj Entertainment was paid back its investment of Rs52 crore.

Prernaa Arora of KriArj Entertainment remained unavailable for comment.

Batti Gul Meter Chalu, which features Shahid Kapoor, Yami Gautam and Shraddha Kapoor, will be released on 31 August. Fanne Khan, starring Anil Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Rajkummar Rao, will be out in theatres on 13 July.