"No delay in the release of Kites" - Anurag Basu

Kites is all set to release in a fortnight from now and the journey, which started 2.5 years back for Hrithik Roshan, Anurag Basu and Rakesh Roshan, is finally coming to an end. What does the man at the hot seat, Anurag Basu, feel about the film finally reaching a finishing mark? After all this is the longest time that he has spent on the making of any film of his and the delay in release can be expected to be frustrating.

"First and foremost let me confirm that there has been no delay in the release of Kites. It is a perception that has been built over a period of time but we never ever announced the release date. The only time it was done, that was for the month of May and we are sticking to that," says Basu whose last release was Life In A Metro.

But what does he feel about the perception which has been built? Has he been able to pencil in on the reasons? "The thing is that there were lot of talks about the film way before the actual shooting began. While Hrithik was of course the lead hero, there were news items around Deepika (Padukone) and then Sonam (Kapoor) being approached. Further to that when Barbara was finalised, there was even greater media attention. As the film stayed in news throughout, the actual shooting didn't take much time. We were ready in October/November last year but then chose to wait because we wanted to come up with two versions. Also, we had to let IPL pass," said Basu.

Still there was a time period before the film went on floors when everyone had to wait for a while."Yes, in the beginning there was some delay because Jodhaa Akbar had got pushed," admits Basu, "Further to that, Hrithik too was facing a knee problem. But then that's okay if Kites has taken its own time from inception to release because when you make a movie of this scale, it does take a reasonable amount of time."