`Akaash Vani` to clash with `Race 2`

Mumbai: Director Luv Ranjan`s love story ‘Akaash Vani’ starring two not-so-popular faces will clash with Abbas-Mustan directed mega budget multistarrer ‘Race 2’ when it hits screens Jan 25.

We have it from a very reliable source that ‘Akaash Vani’ producer Abhishek Pathak and director Ranjan took the decision to pitch their film directly against the ‘Race’ franchise rather than coming a week earlier to avoid a clash. The earlier plan was to release ‘Akaash Vani’ on Jan 18 when Sudhir Mishra`s ‘Inkaar’ was due. But when the core crew saw their end-product, they were confident of taking on the competition, although ‘Race 2’ was a formidable franchise with a showy line-up of stars including Saif Ali Khan, Anil Kapoor, John Abraham and Deepika Padukone. While Kartik Tiwari and Nushrat Bharucha, the lead actors of ‘Akaash Vani’, choose to be diplomatic about their confidence level about scoring over the competition, Ranjan is far more vocal. "We moved forward by a week to release with `Race 2` because we wanted to avail of the long weekend - Eid on Jan 25 , Republic Day on Jan 26 and Sunday on Jan 27," he said. "As for the competition, in Punjabi they say, `Chidiyaan naal jo baaz ladavaan taan Govind Singh naam dharaavan` (when a bird fights a hawk, a Govind Singh gets his name).` We are very confident about our film. If as a viewer I had to choose between `Akaash Vani` and `Race 2`, I`d see `Akaash Vani` first. We had released my `Pyaar Ka Punchnama opposite the `Pirates` franchise. The independent film with fresh faces is here to stay," added the confident director. IANS