After his recent outing as a Tamilian in Dibakar Banerjee's film, Abhay Deol was really looking forward to be seen as a zombie in an upcoming flick. Touted to be India's first zombie film, it has Genelia D'souza as his co-star.
But Navdeep Singh's directorial venture has gone into a zombie state itself! Plagued with numerous problems, there have been news reports for long that the film has been shelved followed by news that Abhay was trying to resurrect it.
The actor admits, "The film is not happening because the co-producer (Siddharth M Jain's iRock) messed it up. There has been all kinds of news about the state of the film. But anything not attributed to me is false. I don't know what they are going to do now. "
Abhay adds, "Both producer Ekta Kapoor and me really want to complete the film. I have suffered a lot because of this. It is really sad. 40 minutes of the film are ready and it is looking really good. The film has everything that a commercial potboiler needs. "
According to him the mess has all been due to iRock's approach. He says, "They don't have enough experience to produce a film. " Apart from going overbudget after a schedule in Rajasthan, Navdeep Singh had also got into a fight with VFX specialist Niraj Shanghai.
As reported ‘Abhay in command' (Hitlist, May 26), the actor had apparently given a personal guarantee to the producer to wrap up the film within the stipulated budget.
Tanuj Garg of Ekta Kapoor's production house says, " The film is very much on. We are a cost-conscious company and we are working out the details about the budget. There is only a delay of couple of months for the film, but it is very much on. " Phew, we wonder who is saying the truth now?
Only one
This is the only Hindi film that Genelia D'Souza has in her kitty at the moment. She had wanted to take time off from the shoot in February to prepare for her wedding to Riteish Deshmukh.
Presently Genelia is only seen in a TV show as a mentor in which she provides style tips. We wonder what Genny's going to be upto if this film folds up.