Harman not scared of competition

As things stand today, neither Love Story 2050 nor Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na are buzzing from their stand and sticking to the release date of 4th July. While the two debutant actors Harman Baweja and Imraan Khan are pretty much getting ready for the BIG clash, for the former it is not the first time that he is being pitted against competition.

If one jogs down the memory lane, there could well have been a similar situation for the Baweja Junior late 2007 when his Love Story 2050 was originally being planned for a Diwali release. At that time, instead of Harman v/s Imran clash, it was Ranbir v/s Harman clash which was being looked forward to, courtesy the arrival of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya.

Frankly, was it the immense buzz surrounding Ranbir Kapoor that had lead to Love Story 2050 being moved into 2008? Was delay in work on SFX/CGI being just an excuse after all?

"How funny", says Harman after a hearty laugh, "After investing close to 3 years on a film, working with hundreds of crew members, globe trotting to get the best of the technical team in place to get that perfect look for the film, living the film every minute, spending crores and crores and then patiently waiting for it to arrive on the big screen, you don't start looking for excuses to delay your product. Seriously, you don't move a 50 crore movie fearing competition."

Relaxing a little, Harman quips, "Thankfully, industry is a small place and hence these rumors didn't hamper our dream project. After all those silly murmurs of the film being delayed due to other newcomers arriving in Bollywood, insiders started seeing it for themselves that we were actually working on the task rather than relaxing, twiddling out thumbs and letting go off all the big and the small launch pads so that a certain Harman Baweja can finally make a grand entry!"

Harman continues to joke, "I think we shouldn't have spoken about the release timing at all last year. Perhaps for the next film that we start making for which we may have 2009 as the target, we would instead announce the release year as 2011. The industry too would start feeling that we are working on something big and later when we would in fact arrive in 2009, we will claim that we were able to work at a faster pace and are hence ahead of times!"