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Shankar and Shah Rukh Khan - 300 Crore Ego War

PUBLISHED DATE : 05/Dec/2011

Shankar and Shah Rukh Khan - 300 Crore Ego War

Shankar vs. Shah Rukh Khan - 300 Crore Ego War

Ego wars and movie industry are like Idli and chutney. It is an industry where big egoes drive snap decisions that may either destroy or propel a career higher. Naturally, media has taken a lot of interest in covering film related controversies over many decades. However, the industries biggest ego war between Shankar and Shah Rukh Khan was largely kept under the wraps due to the decency of the parties involved. So, here is an exclusive coverage of what really transpired behind the scenes.

 

2007 - Shankar and SRK decide to come together for 'Robot' 

Fresh out of delivering a blockbuster hit movie, Sivaji,  Shankar began the work for Robot in Hindi in order to reach wider audience. Shankar approached Shah Rukh Khan, provided the bound script and discussed in detail his vision for the story. The crack in the relationship started to appear at this point due to the following couple of key reasons,

 

  • Shah Rukh Khan, after discussing the script with his director friends (Karan Johar, Farah Khan, etc.) came back with a lots of corrections and red ink all over the script. This did not go very well with Shankar who is driven by strong passion and vision for his script.

 

  • Secondly, Shankar suggested doing the Computer Graphics(CG) through Hollywood's Stan Winston studios. But, SRK insisted on doing the CG within his in-house Red Chillies VFX. SRK's argument was that If SRK didn't do personally use the studio. Then, he thought it would make it difficult to convince other film makers to use his VFX studio.

 

Both these issues led to some irreconcilable differences and both decided to call off the project by putting a smile on their faces albeit a big scratch to their egoes.

 

Shankar decides to make Robot as a regional movie 

At this point when making it in Hindi got ruled out due to non availability of Aamir Khan's dates, his second choice. Shankar knew that there is only one other actor in India who could possibly recover the investment costs required for making Robot. So, he approached Rajni and discussed the script. Rajini had some doubts whether he would be able to pull it off. His immense confidence in Shankar made him take up the challenging role and committed himself 100% to it.

 

At the time of Post-Production stage, everybody felt that "Robot" had a great title value. But the problem is Shah Rukh Khan owned the title of "Robot" through his production house. Rajini approached SRK requesting for the title for the Hindi version of Enthiran. SRK gave the title whole-heartedly to Rajini for releasing it in Hindi. 

 

Ra.One Commences simultaneously

SRK also started Ra.One script with Director Anubhav Sinha in November of 2007 with the goal to make a similar sci-fi story line bigger and better than Enthiran.

 

  • SRK made sure to incorporate the script changes in Ra.One that he had suggested to Shankar during Robot story discussions

 

  • SRK also made sure to have an identical train fight sequence so people can be the judge on which graphics is better. This is to show case the superiority of Red Chillies VFX.

 

  • During the final stages of release, SRK had approached Rajni to act in cameo role to make sure he can maximize the collections down south. Rajini who felt indebted for getting the title rights for "Robot" from SRK and was glad to return the favor.  

 

Endhiran vs Ra.One - Who finally won?

Both the movies started around the same time and finished almost one year apart. Enthiran released in October 2010 and became the highest grossing movie of all time in India. (200-225 crores within the first 2 weeks as per the recently released FICCI Deloitte report). Ra One released with a much higher budget, lot more marketing spend with access to 10 times bigger market. But Ra.One was able to collect only 2/3rd of Enthiran's collection.

 

This is no small feat for Shankar and the team to make a Tamil movie with such a small market to beat an all-India biggest budget movie by a mile. Salute to Shankar for such a huge achievement and also for having the decency to not go around bashing SRK in public and media at the time when the controversy erupted.

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