Here's Everything You Need To Know About Kangana Ranaut, Apurva Asrani And Simran Credit Row!

When Hansal Mehta revealed the first teaser of his upcoming film with Kangana Ranaut - Simran, little did he know that it would be soon all over the news, and for all the wrong reasons.

While film writer-editor Apurva Asrani expressed his discomfort with Kangana’s credit for “additional story and dialogues” being placed higher, Kangana has claimed to have effectively written the entire film. Too much mud-slinging and back-and-forth has happened ever since.

To help you understand the fiasco, here’s a chronological lowdown on who said what over the issue:

1. Apurva expresses his displeasure
Hours after the poster and teaser of Simran were released, Apurva wrote in a long Facebook post: “Ms Ranaut has been claiming in several interviews that Hansal Mehta, the director of Simran, approached her with just a one line screenplay of the film. She says that the story was [a] dark & gritty thriller at that stage and that she herself developed it into a light, fun film. This completely discredits me and my efforts, and I have to call out this lie at the cost of so many of her fans turning against me.”

2. Apurva is accused of stealing credit for Shahid
Before Kangana Ranaut or Hansal Mehta, or even Simran’s producer responded to Apurva Asrani, a writer surfaced on Facebook and accused Apurva of having “stolen” the writer’s credit for Shahid - Mehta’s national-award-winning film.

Writer Sameer Gautam wrote on his Facebook wall, “Let me start by saying that I am the writer of Shahid that no one in the industry knows about except my team and my director. You all know of Apurva Asrani as the writer of Shahid. Am I right? From the first day of my research where I did not even have Shahid Azmi’s address to the final shooting script and till the end of production, after which I also worked on the subtitles for the film’s festival cut.”

3. Kangana claims she almost wrote the entire film, Simran
In an interview to Huffington Post, Kangana said, “Nobody can take away from the fact that if Simran today is a story of a divorced woman, it’s entirely introduced by me. If the film has feminist undercurrents, I included that. The father-daughter track, the lover’s track in the film—these are subplots that I added. Even Apurva cannot take away that... Later, Hansal did a draft of his own and I could sense that he was under enormous pressure. He wanted to break away from Apurva but he couldn’t. We did three drafts together and I still wasn’t satisfied. I couldn’t sense a spark. Finally, Hansal and I agreed that we’ll fine tune this in the US (they reached there about a fortnight in advance) and I’ll write the dialogues on sets.”

4. Hansal Mehta responds
Director Hansal Mehta responded to the entire fiasco and without taking any names, said that he will continue to credit people who work to improve his films. He tweeted, “Yes, I am guilty. Guilty of crediting individuals who contribute to making my films very special to many of us. Call me names, as many names as you want. But in your desperation to seek attention and gain sympathy do not try to harm my film.”

5. Ketan Mehta claims Kangana “hijacked” his film, Apurva says - Karma!
Filmmaker Ketan Mehta sent a legal notice to the Queen star for “hijacking” one of his most ambitious film projects, Rani of Jhansi: The Warrior Queen. “My legal notice says how we have worked on the project for two years and how all of a sudden everything happened. We have asked for the film (Manikarnika) to stop as we plan to go ahead with our project (Ketan’s film),” Ketan told Hindustan Times.
Reacting to the development, Apurva tweeted the story and wrote, “#Karma.”

6.Apurva reacts to Kangana’s interview
Apurva wrote yet another Facebook post, responding to Kangana’s remarks. “I have no problem with Kangana Ranaut taking an ‘additional writing’ credit on ‘Simran’. She has contributed to the film and I would be ashamed to take solo credit for someone else’s dialogues. Her getting an additional writing credit has never been the issue here. The issue arises when in the credits, the ‘additional writer’ is given precedence over the writer, who actually put finger to keyboard and broke the stare of a blank page. It is also disconcerting when the additional writer, Ms Ranaut in this case, goes to town discrediting the original writer, and claims that she has actually written the film. That has always been my fight. Nothing more. Nothing less,” he wrote.