There are a number of big budget films that have been dropped because of the unpredictability at the box office and the failure of some huge films. Karna, directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, which featured superstar Surya in the lead role and Janhvi Kapoor who was to play Draupadi among other cast members has been shelved according to sources. This includes the entire cast such as Vijay Verma, Ali Fazal and Avinash Tiwari. It was supposed to be a pan-India project produced by Excel Entertainment. The estimated budget for Karna stood at about Rs 350 cr with Rs 15 cr already spent on pre-production and look tests.
A source told Bollywood Hungama, “But actually what is happening is that people are being informed that it has been postponed but department heads from these different sections are being notified that they should stop working on it because unfortunately this film won’t come up.”
Karna was a dream come true for both Rang De Basanti director and Excel Entertainment; its actors were also betting on this mythology packed movie full of special effects and international quality post production work . Besides Hindi, it was also planned to be released in Tamil, Telugu as well as other languages.
This news had sent shockwaves across the industry when a big film is called off. After they had been given some clue about this non-occurrence of the film, now cast members can move onto other projects.
