Hera Pheri, starring Akshay Kumar, Paresh Rawal, and Suniel Shetty recently completed 21 years and the movie never fails to entertain.
However, did you know there was a time when this movie had hit a rough patch?
As per reports, Hera Pheri’s producer Firoz Nadiadwala claimed that director Priyadarshan left the shooting of Hera Pheri midway. The claims came after Priyadarshan criticized the sequel of the film, Phir Hera Pheri. In an interview, Firoz said as he abandoned the first installment, he decided to keep him away from the sequel as well.
Speaking with Mid-Day, Firoz said, “He gave me a film with a runtime of three hours and 40 minutes. His version was full of depressing scenes; a lot of the humorous dialogues were deleted. He was absent during the background music recording and dubbing.”
Firoz later added that the real work of the movie began only after Priyadarshan left the movie. He says that the script that was handed to him was depressing and was about an economically challenged family. Late-writer and director Neeraj Vora completed the Hera Pheri shooting.
“Neeraj added a lot of punchlines. We deleted the sad scenes. We did a lot of improvisations during the dubbing and editing to make it what the audience knows by today,” he added.
However, Firoz’s sister Noorie, organised a special screening for Priyadarshan and his family even though he left the project midway.
He said, “He did not tell her how he abandoned the project midway. This was the first time he watched the final cut, which was completely different from what he had given. The film, which the audiences saw, was the director’s cut in the sense that the director was cut from the final version,”
Firoz also claimed that Priyadarshan also tried to ‘convince the actors to say no’ to the sequel.