Some 15 people broke ties with KriArj Entertainment only after HC ruled in our favour: John Abraham

The battle between KriArj Entertainment and actor-producer John Abraham's JA Entertainment over Parmanu: The Story Of Pokhran was fought in the Bombay high court. Abraham won and secured the rights to the movie. Later, JA Entertainment issued a statement saying the film will be jointly produced by JA Entertainment, Zee Studios, Kyta Productions, with Vashu Bhagnani's Pooja Entertainment distributing the film in India. There was no celebration over the court's verdict, nor did the actor speak against KriArj Entertainment.

However, looks like now the time has come. In an rare occurrence, Abraham has briefly spoken about the bitter battle. The actor expressed his disappointment over other production houses that faced similar problems with KriArj Entertainment, but did not support him when he went to court. 

Speaking to Firstpost.com, a news portal, he said, “Before the verdict, I had only said that people who are involved in cases similar to mine should come forward but they never came forward. For them, it was a wait-and-watch situation but the moment the verdict went in our favour, some 15 people swooped in. People related to Batti Gul Meter Chalu, Kedarnath, Fanne Khan came in succession. They all waited for my film’s verdict. I had the guts to go out there and call a spade a spade.”

It must be recalled that JA Entertainment had accused KriArj Entertainment of defaulting on payments and breach of contract, and had terminated their association. KriArj Entertainment had filed a counter criminal complaint against JA Entertainment. Prernaa Arora of KriArj Entertainment, in an exclusive interview with us, had claimed the dispute was only over Rs5 crore which they would have paid Abraham and JA Entertainment before the film is released.  

Parmanu is set to be released on 25 May.

Incidentally, Abhishek Kapoor, director of Kedarnath, had cited default in payments as the reason for his falling-out with KriArj Entertainment. Kapoor and KriArj Entertainment parted ways amicably after Ronnie Screwvala Productions took up the production reigns and paid up the Rs52 crore that KriArj Entertainment had invested in the film.

As for Fanne Khan, the entire film was shot save for a couple of songs. According to Mid-Day, a tabloid, certain crew members of the film were not paid their full dues. Rajiv Tandon of  Rakeysh Omprakash Productions, co-producer of Fanne Khan, told Cinestaan.com that the delay was due to other reasons.

While no official announcements were made, Batti Gul Meter Chalu’s shoot, too, was said to have been stalled due to delay in payments. Speaking to us earlier, director Shree Narayan Singh, too, denied that this was the case. However, last week, T-Series announced that it is co-producing Fanne Khan and solely producing Batti Gul Meter Chalu. No reason was provded for the breakup with KriArj Entertainment.

KriArj Entertainment merely stated that it will start afresh. "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," read a statement.