Producer Ashwin Varde has accused Paresh Rawal of ‘theft’ over OMG 2 credit claims

Veteran actor Paresh Rawal’s recent announcement that OMG 2 is his separate concept and that he will be denied credit score has ignited fierce controversy. While the film's lead actor Akshay Kumar has remained silent, producer Ashwin Varde has slammed the claims as "shocking, untrue and unfounded" and compared Rawal's alleged moves to "nothing short of theft".

Prosecution: Public dispute over authorship

The fight started when Paresh Rawal in an interview claimed that he conceived the story of OMG 2 and took it to director Amitra Roy. Rawal said he contributed ideas and helped craft the script, easier than credit to ignore. “The saddest part is that the story or the concept did not even get a credit score,” Rawal lamented, insisting that the chief industry figure was aware of his position.

Setting the record straight: Verde explains the origins of the film
In the extensive interaction, Ashwin Varde strongly contradicted Rawal’s narrative, and gave his own timeline of how OMG 2 got here. He explained that the very beginning of the mission was changed to be entirely exclusive to Rawal’s account.

          Varde shared that actor Pawan Malhotra first brought him to producer-director Amit Rai. The script, which eventually became OMG 2, was changed to tell Verde through an impromptu meeting. “When I first heard about it, my reaction on the spot was that this problem was very similar to OMG’s setup,” Verde recalls.

The OMG format and a critical misrepresentation
          The resemblance to the unique OMG turned out to be no coincidence. According to Verde, he discovered that Amitra had deliberately written the script in that setup at the request of Paresh Rawal. Rawal had allegedly instructed Rai to settle as close to OMG as possible, assuring him that the intellectual property (IP) rights belonged to Rawal.

          “Amit had asked the same question to Paresh and Paresh informed him that the IP was his and hardly anything to worry about,” said Varde, noting that Rawal even promised Rai a director’s chair at any future point.

Akshay Kumar's attempt to bypass
          It soon became clear to Varde that Rawal’s motives became to create a new version of OMG in a different format, deliberately excluding Akshay Kumar, who owned the actual IP rights, which Varde called this plan as “unethical and unprofessional”.

          He detailed a fateful meeting in which he told Rawal to take the script to Kumar. "I bowled to see his reaction. He emphasized that this film cannot be OMG... After a factor, it became clear that he wanted to keep Akshay Kumar out of the job, who has particular motives about him," Varde said. The producer defined that giving up Kumar’s rights could be like creating a prototype of Sholay without permission, calling the whole venture “theft”.

Why the film found its rightful home
Verde noted that Rawal’s earlier attempt to cast various important stars including Ajay Devgn and Salman Khan failed as they discovered that the garment was originally from Akshay Kumar’s film It was born.

The question of debt and compensation.

Verde concluded his statement by using a direct address to the issue of loan fees. He explained that the script is, and always has been, legally registered under the call of Amit Rai as the sole producer, which makes any expectation of Rawal’s credit unreasonable.

The manufacturer was also told that despite his claims, Raval paid damages for a long time. “I must also say that Paresh Rawal got due credit points as a producer in OMG 2, though he contributed zero to it… Not only did Paresh Rawal pay a certain amount for OMG 2 as well, which he conveniently forgets to mention,” Varde said, summing up the controversy in an accent It prevents you from doing so.”