Jumbo, the animation film for children and families which is being heavily promoted by Akshay Kumar, has been seeing some rather jumbo-sized politics backstage. The whisper is that Akki was paid a hefty Rs 9-crore fee by Percept, only for lending his voice to the main character, as a bait for completing their other film, Eight By Ten. Of course, that fee was paid before the market turned cautious over elephantine salaries. But it has ultimately worked out well because once Akshay came on board he didn’t stop at providing only a voice over. He roped in star names like Lara Dutta to dub for the other characters, held rehearsals at his house, took a personal interest in turning Jumbo into a glossy biggie and he has now pulled out the stops for its promotion. He’s virtually functioning like the brand ambassador for the film.

It has been a successful deal after all for Percept as their incomplete Nagesh Kukunoor film Eight By Ten also huffed and puffed to the finish line last week. The film had got stuck when an entire schedule in Canada went haywire and Akshay’s precious dates were wasted. That had miffed the actor and thereafter wooing him to complete the film was a screenplay of its own and took over a year to accomplish.

An inside source says that Akshay may have finally done all his shooting for Nagesh’s film but it was all far from hunky dory. On the sets, Akshay had his own ideas for executing a scene which, of course, differed widely from director Nagesh’s vision. Kukunoor wanted scenes done his way, underplayed and natural, while Akshay Kumar has a predilection for louder, commercial acting. So after a scene was shot Kukunoor style, Akshay would say, ‘Ok, you’ve done it your way. Now let’s do it my way.’ And the scene would be shot all over again!

By the way, if you happened to watch Akshay at work while shooting for Eight By Ten, you would’ve wondered why he looked in one particular direction while delivering his lines. It seems even for a two-line dialogue, there was a teleprompter with his lines flashing for Akki to read out and deliver!

Since Akshay inspires big money talk, let’s look at Shah Rukh Khan’s grand party in his suite at The Atlantis in Dubai, attended by Robert DeNiro, Charlize Theron and Richard Branson, among others, which is front page everywhere. The Bridge Suite costs 1,50,000 dirhams a night and it was booked for Oprah Winfrey. It was only when the talk show host pulled out of attending the Atlantis party that it was offered to our very own Shah Rukh Khan.

Everything about Shah Rukh spells lavish living. In the large apartments that he has built behind his sea-facing Bandra bungalow, there are steel vaults like you see in Richie Rich comics. These are huge walk-in vaults where wife Gauri Khan stores her astounding collection of jewellery. An insider swears that Gauri has these massive vaults, one vault for earrings, one for neck pieces, one for bangles, one for watches and so on. All neatly laid out. And the latest fingerprint and retina-recognition security has been installed everywhere. Now you know why Gauri Khan doesn’t visit the neighbourhood bank lockers, like you and I do.

Let’s return to politics. Remember Jaswant Singh’s book which was going to be turned into a Hindi film with Shatrughan Sinha playing the former Minister for External Affairs? There’s a rumour going around that Subhash Chandra Goyal’s Zee TV took over the film that Pehlaj Nihalani was supposed to make based on Call To Honour, but the organisation simply put it on the backburner after L.K. Advani voiced his protest against turning the unsavoury Kandahar hijack into a film. With elections round the corner, the last thing the BJP would want is a reminder of the many goof-ups and cover-ups that the hijack entailed. So politics has prevailed over cinema and the film has been aborted before take-off.

And lastly, guess who is the real winner of Bigg Boss this season? It’s Pramod Mahajan’s controversial son, Rahul. After providing all the entertainment in the house, Rahul Mahajan is on several magazine covers. And now he’s plotting his next move. He has five firm film offers (yes, acting assignments), apart from a whole load of TV stuff. They want him on several reality shows as a judge or as celebrity guest. But Rahul Mahajan has tasted blood. The buzz is that he’s holding out until he gets a Rahul Mahajan Show of his own!

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor, Movie Mag International