Karan Johar and Ayan had creative disagreement on ‘Kesariya’

• Filmmaker Karan Johar claims that after seeing the earlier iteration of Kesariya from director Ayan Mukerji, he questioned him, “What is wrong with you?”
• aran and Ayan Mukerji spoke about their creative differences during the filming of Brahmastra at the FICCI Frames Fast Track event in Mumbai.
• A sequence in the movie that Ayan filmed that Karan didn’t like was also disclosed by Karan.

Filmmaker Karan Johar claims that after seeing the earlier iteration of Kesariya from Brahmastra Part 1: Shiva director Ayan Mukerji, he questioned him, “What is wrong with you?” Karan and Ayan Mukerji spoke about their creative differences during the filming of Brahmastra at the FICCI Frames Fast Track event in Mumbai. A sequence in the movie that Ayan filmed that Karan didn’t like was also disclosed by Karan.

Amitabh Bhattacharya wrote Kesariya, which stars Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, and it was performed by Arjit Singh and composed by Pritam. The main actors were seen romancing when the song played during the Varanasi filming. Following its debut, the love song received considerable mockery on social media for its lyrics. A portion of social media users also noted some similarities between Kesariya from Brahmastra and Laree Chotee, a well-known song from the 2007 movie Ek Chaalis Ki Last Local.

Ayan said at the event, “There was stuff which Karan did not like. There was a big Kaali Puja sequence in the film. When you (Karan) saw the sequence, you were very harsh. He really bit**** about it. I hope I am allowed to say that word.”

Karan replied, “I never did that. I said that the scene was very terrible and I said I think you need to re-shoot it. And there was actually, and we can say it now, Kesariya was shot in another way. Kesariya was shot with Ranbir dancing quite feverishly. When we saw the song, I said ‘What the hell is going on? What is wrong with you Ayan?’. Why were they dancing? Kesariya was shot differently. Same tune melody but treated differently. It is then that Ayan realised it has to be treated differently.”

Reddit users recently published a video of Ayan responding to Kesariya’s detractors in an interview. Ayan had said, “We put it with a lot of love, we found it very interesting. We did not find it like elaichi, we thought it was a twist like bahut shakkar me thoda namak jab aata hai, uska ek maza, ek swaad hai (its not like a cardamon in biryani, its like salt amid too much sugar, it has its own taste). Because the film is a modern film and the lyrics of the song are so traditional and simple, and this would have been a fun twist.”

Apart from Ranbir Kapoor and Alia, Brahmastra also features Amitabh Bachchan, Mouni Roy, Nagarjuna in prominent roles. The film released on September 9.