Money Problems – Bilal Lashari goes all Maula Jatt with his producer Hasan Waqas Rana.

Sorry for the overly dramatic title but once you have read the entire piece you will realize how apt the title is. So what exactly happened you ask? Well before going into the story lets start with a few known facts which will help establish the story.

The facts are :-

1. Waar was a huge blockbuster.
2. Waar made a whole lot of money.
3. Waar was directed by Bilal Lashari.
4. Waar was produced by Hasan Waqas Rana.

The problem now is that Bilal Lahari is claiming that he has not been given his due share of the profit and that all the money that has been made out of the film has directly gone into the bank account of the producer Mr Rana–a separate bank account that Bilal claims the producer had the money transferred into in order to keep the transfer under wraps. Bilal maintains that the film was made on a budget of 6 crore (Really! because if memory serves me right the budget was heavily promoted as being 20 crore!!!) and has done a business of 25 crore. Bilal believes that Mr. Rana has deposited 20 crore into his own account while he has been completely ignored in this profit sharing, which is the outright breach of the contract between them.

Here I must add that Bilal has a rather weak knowledge of cinema and his maths is even weaker! According to Bilal’s simplistic logic, Waar raked in 25 crore, the budget was 6 crore so the difference stands at 19 crore, which Bilal’s poor maths led him to believe was 20 crore transferred in full into Mr Rana’s bank account. Furthermore even if this difference had been 20 crore its not as if all the money goes to the producers because the cinema owners (exhibitors) and distributors get their own share of these profits and what the producer ends up with is only a fraction of this amount.

But Bilal is hell bent that he is being wronged and is not being given his promised 25 percent profit. Therefore he has gone ahead and filed (FIR) against Mr Rana.

Now Mr.Rana the producer has his own fairy tale story to tell. He says that he paid Bilal Lashari 1.5 crore for his services (Note please that in an industry where the main superstar hardly makes 1 crore, Mr Rana payed the director 1.5 crore). Well he also adds that the film was to be made in 45 days (as if it was another run of the mill gujjar film) but the film took 3 years to complete and hence the expenses started to increase exponentially.

Well had I been a producer whose film was to be completed in 45 days but took 3 years to make, I would have fired the lazy director soon enough, but Mr Rana did not do that. Also Mr Rana received threatening emails from Bilal where Bilal said
” I will delete the film. Give me 25 percent of the profits. Buahahaha!!!” and Mr. Rana got more scared than a teenage girl and gave into the pressure.

Mr Rana also adds that Bilal got quite a few awards but he didn’t get any such honor. See this was the entire problem. I always knew Mr Rana wanted some spotlight on him but when he did not get that, he decided to take all the money and teach spotlight hogging Bilal a lesson.

Well, we dont know who is telling the truth and who is a big fat liar but we really hope that the problem gets resolved and both the men make peace because we want more amazing films by this powerhouse producer-director jodi.

–The story is based on a recent article by Dawn.com on the same issue.