Amidst the mixed bag of reactions about the recently dropped War 2 teaser, an industry insider, choosing to stay anonymous, took to the internet and revealed some behind-the-scenes events related to the making of War 2.
The user claimed that the original War was never even supposed to happen.
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After Bang Bang, Siddharth Anand and Hrithik Roshan hit it off, which led them to pitch War to YRF.
Now, YRF usually doesn’t work with directors once they’ve left the studio, but since the company had been underperforming for years, they were desperate for a blockbuster and figured Hrithik was the golden ticket.
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War turned out to be a huge success. However, the anonymous source claimed that while Hrithik Roshan received a major profit share, Siddharth Anand got paid peanuts.
So, YRF promised him better remuneration for Pathaan and a share of the profits for War 2.
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Pathaan exploded at the box office, and Siddharth got the promised remuneration.
By this point, Siddharth was big enough to mount projects with both Hrithik and Shah Rukh Khan under his own production house.
Despite this new power, Siddharth still approached YRF to direct War 2. But they backtracked on their profit share promise. So Siddharth walked out after consulting Hrithik, who was already ready to move on to Fighter.
With the flop of Tiger 3, YRF went into damage control mode and ended up roping in Salman Khan, reportedly getting 70% of the film’s profits. YRF thought that the ‘Spyverse’ tag was enough to market any film but it clearly wasn’t the case.
Since the trade had been expecting a steady flow of Spyverse content after Pathaan, YRF had to make a call for War 2.
The source added that Rani Mukerji pushed her cousin Ayan Mukerji for the project, despite his disappointment with Brahmāstra. However, Hrithik and Ayan bonded well, and the project was set in motion.
The source claimed Ayan had zero experience in treatment for mass entertainers or action sequences. So on War 2, he mostly handled the actors, while the DOP, ADs, and stunt coordinators executed the movie as they saw fit.
Ayan tended to change scenes or sequences mid-shoot if they didn’t ‘feel’ right to him. He did the same on War 2, and ended up pissing off the crew so much that Ali Abbas Zafar had to step in and supervise 50–55% of the film’s reshoots.
During reshoots, Ayan was kept on set but was excluded from post-production.
It’s shocking that despite all this chaos, YRF is still promoting the film as a worthy successor and openly praising Ayan for his work.
If this anonymous source is to be believed, Ayan Mukerji was also set to direct Dhoom 4. And if things played out on War 2 the way the source claims, it’ll be interesting to see if YRF still trusts him with their upcoming projects.
