Akshaye Khanna Removed Me As Director: Section 375 Writer Manish Gupta Opens Up About His Experience Working With Dhurandhar Actor

Akshaye Khanna is making headlines not only for his performance in Dhurandhar but also due to his controversial exit from Drishyam 3. Since the actor walked out of the Ajay Devgn film owing to fee issues, he has gained several detractors, with some people sharing their negative experiences of working with him. One of the recent voices is filmmaker Manish Gupta, who is known for writing the screenplays for Sarkar and Section 375. He shared his experience with Akshaye while working on Section 375 and also accused producer Kumar Mangat of removing him as a director because of Khanna.

Akshaye Khanna breached the contract of Section 375: Manish Gupta

In a conversation with Bollywood Hungama, Gupta shared that in 2017, Khanna signed a film titled Section 375 with Gupta as a director-writer and Kumar Mangat as a producer. His fee in the contract was fixed at ₹2 crores, and he took an advance of ₹21 lakh. Despite locking dates with him, Khanna gave away the dates to the makers of The Accidental Prime Minister and flew off to London for the shoot, leaving him and his crew stranded for six months.

"After finishing that movie, Akshaye came back and started demanding ₹3.25 crores. Instead of the ₹2 crores signed by him in the contract. He thus breached his contract. Akshaye’s unreasonable demands did not end here," Gupta further revealed.

What were the other demands listed by Akshaye Khanna?

Gupta revealed that Khanna wanted to fully control the filming, but he didn't bow down to the actor's need, which resulted in his exit from the project as a director. "Since it was hurting Akshaye’s ego to take orders from an authoritarian director like me, he started pestering the producer Kumar Mangat to remove me as the director. Producer Kumar Mangat, instead of disciplining the actor’s unreasonable behaviour, made me a scapegoat and removed me as the director while seizing my fully-written bound script and the hard drive containing my three years of hard work on the pre-production," he continued.

When asked did he took any legal action against Khanna and Mangat, Gupta agreed and said, he sent two legal notices to the producer, and his lawyers were filing a case at the Bombay High Court against both of them, but Mangat did an out-of-court settlement with him. "Today, ironically, when producer Kumar Mangat is facing the brunt of Akshaye’s unethical behaviour in an Ajay Devgan starrer film Drishyam 3, Mangat has taken legal action against Akshaye," he added.

Gupta is satisfied that everyone knows that it was his vision as Section 375's credit carries his name as the solo writer of the story, dialogues and screenplay.

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