Ready for the Wedding Battle to the Death? Or maybe it won’t be a wedding after all, maybe there will be some other story that beats Weddings. It’s exciting!
Which of these is your favorite story? Or the one you think is the most important? Or the one you care about the most? Or the one you are most interested in? Use whatever measure you like, and pick one and tell me us in the comments! Oh, and if I missed something, you can write it in.
(I purposefully did not include Sridevi because it seemed tacky to throw that in with everything else. Obviously, her death is the most important film related thing to happen to India in 2018)
Sonam Kapoor Wedding
Days of social media images dribbling out, the biggest stars in the industry getting down together, singing and dancing and being drunk. Nothing polished and nothing rehearsed. Refreshing!
Arjun Kapoor, Anshula Kapoor, Janhvi Kapoor, and Khushi Kapoor Reunion
The half-siblings no one ever thought would unit, brought together by grief. In one stroke, Arjun Kapoor going from a self-contained young man to the head of a family. How can you resist this story???
I’m breaking the PC stories down into their component parts, because otherwise it just becomes too big. Let’s start with the first major India news, Priyanka drops out of Bharat literally days before she was scheduled to start her shooting schedule. Salman Khan and the rest of the team are not easily able hide their displeasure and awareness that she dumped them for a Hollywood film, using a possible engagement as an excuse. And then in a surprise twist, Priyanka’s Hollywood movie ends up not panning out either and she is left with one small Indian film and nothing else.
Priyanka Gets Engaged to Nick
What is there to say? Rumors of the engagement started by Ali Abbas Zafar announcing the Bharat drop out, spreading quickly to the West, being minimized, then brought out again with a big announcement. And then the big Indian engagement party, the global press coverage of the whirlwind romance, and so on and so forth.
Priyanka Marries Nick
Destination wedding, Delhi reception, Bombay reception, so many clothes.
Ranveer-Dips Wedding
Well, “Wedding(s)”. The timidity in making the announcement and then the final reveal of the wedding card, the wait for the official photos to come out from the Lake Como ceremonies, the series of parties for family and friends, and then the final massive Bombay reception.
Ranbir Dates Alia
The rumors started years back and then heated up just recently with their filming together overseas and many shared instagram photos, and appearance together at Sonam’s wedding. Finally Ranbir confirmed it in an interview, followed by his parents following and making nice with Alia on social media, new more casual candid shots of the couple, and Alia’s Koffee appearance where she declared it a pleasant easy relationship.
Anurag Kashyap Kills His Company to Break with Vikas Bahl
Started well before 2018, Anurag leaked that Vikas was a predator and began warning his friends from working with him. It was early 2017 that they started the exploration of legal options. But it was in 2018 that the survivor of Vikas’ attack went public with a lengthy anonymous interview allowing Anurag to go public as well with his side of the story and exactly why Phantom is now a dead studio.
Kangana Ranaut Takes Over Manikarnika
Again, began back in 2017. The film was announced and the first director (or first two directors? I don’t remember) dropped out and rumor said it was because of Kangana’s interference. Krrish was announced, fresh off winning a National Award for a historic epic and gave casual interviews about how he looked forward to working with Kangana and was sure there would be no issues. Rumors of problems began leaking from the set almost immediately, filming was delayed over and over, finally in late 2018 Krrish left the city, flying back to Madras to work on his next film, the NTR biopic. Kangana was said to be doing “patchwork” shooting of the few scenes he had missed. But then Sonu Sood left and Kangana declared it was because he couldn’t work with a female director, and he had stupid hair. Sonu was forced to fire back and say it was Kangana was incapable of staying on schedule and he had a commitment. And it became obvious they were shooting far more than “patchwork”. Now here we are with Kangana getting a co-director credit.
RK Studios is Up for Sale
One of the oldest and first studio lots in Bombay, run by the Kapoor family for 2 generations, suffered a terrible fire last year and this year the three Kapoor sons declared it was time to let it go, sell the studio and move on.
KriArj Falls, Prerna Arora Goes to Jail
KriArj rose fast, one of the new studios that takes ideas from creative types and funding from major international companies and puts them together. Prerna Arora was supposed to be a wunderkind, a young woman who was re-imagining the industry and taking it by storm. And then they tried to cancel the film Kedarnath and take it from the director, who went to court to get it back and prove he still had rights to it. Then they tried to take away John Abraham’s film, forcing him to file countersuit explaining that they had not paid him for his investments in years. Suit after suit followed from that, it became clear that KriArj was selling rights to multiple distributors and pocketing the extra money, never paying it back to the creators. Culminating in Prerna Arora (formally high flying popular producer) being put in jail on her birthday while her mother and business partner went into hiding.
dontcallitbollywood 
I vote for Kangana. The way each bit of the story dribbled out, it was the gift that kept on giving, and there are so many characters and angles and unreliable narrators, it allows for endless discussion. Plus Kangana the bomb-thrower at the center of it all to keep things from getting dull.
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You’re right, it is pretty amazing.
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For me, it was the Ranveer-Deepika wedding. I didn’t realize how invested I was in their love story until we all had to wait for the pictures! I thought they handled it all perfectly and with such class, exactly how I would have if I was rich and famous, with private, meaningful ceremonies, amazing clothes, and a big party. Sonam’s was also fun (and I loved her reception look), but theirs felt like a royal wedding to me.
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Yes! Ranveer Dips definitely win the weddings in terms of a couple I actually cared about and was eager to see get their happy ending. Years of PDA and sweet stories finally getting a pay off in a way that felt private and real, but also gave us just enough to make us feel involved.
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I vote Sonam’s Wedding…it was so much fun! The barrage of photos, Instagram videos, the stars drunk dancing…it all showed us an inside look into the industry….I want a Netflix to buy her wedding video and release it as a special!
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Yes!!!!! Except instead of a wedding video, I want a wedding miniseries. 8 hours of footage from cameras placed all over the hall.
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One episode will follow Rhea as she goes around to all the designers shopping for Sonam’s wedding clothes…another episode can focus on the history of Arjun-Anshula-Jhanvi-Khushi relationship culminating in them all tearfully dancing together at the wedding…and let’s also have a special section devoted to Taimur having fun at his first Bollywood event because why not?
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YES! Yes yes yes!!!! And a special sad episode for Anil and Sonu dealing with their daughter moving away.
On Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 8:31 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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In terms of stories I personally followed I was riveted by Prick because they are ridiculous and also a Hollywood/Bollywood crossover. I got to spend a lot of fun time contextualizing things for Americans who didn’t know anything about Indian wedding culture, for example comparing Prick with Dipveer.
But the Anurag Kashyap/Vikas Bahl situation was something else. An entire studio gone. And Kashyap’s statement was incredible because he wrestled publicly with his culpability for what happened.
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Yes! And I feel like the Phantom story needs more attention because it shows how far it is possible to go in a quest to do the right thing. In the end, what are you saving?
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We might be getting an even bigger story. Lots of gossip floating around that Rajkumar Hirani is going to be named soon in MeToo. His name has also been removed from Sonam’s upcoming movie posters. He was supposed to be producing it with VVC. His name was there in the posters that came out many months ago but gone from the recent ones.
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Oo! An early entry for 2019 top story!
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Considering how women get treated in Hirani films this would not shock me at all.
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I thought the Sajid Khan story was the most important and the most disturbing. In that light-the Anurag Kashyap Vikas Behl & Rani Mukharjee & Pretty Zinta’s comments on MeToo were also revealing on how ignorant and flippant the big stars are about society & women causes.
The most ridiculous one was definitely Prick closely followed by Kangana directing.Both has tons of money involved,feels like something to fool people and without a happy result coming out.
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Agree. I was going to write that for me the most important was #MeToo movement. Weddings were nice and fun to watch but it was #MeToo that had much impact and, I want to believe, changed people’s way of thinking. I hope many others predators will be disclosed soon.
From weddings, the most important was Deepika-Ranveer for sure.
The news that made happy: Arjun and his sisters, Prerna in jail, Sajid Khan in a garbage dump of directors.
Less important gossip: Alia-Ranbir, I don’t even believe this stuff.
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I agree Metoo was definitely a big step forward in the film industry and I feel all the Sajid like people should serve time in jail for all the abuse and harrasment but banning them in movies is still progress I guess
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KriArj for me. I’d watch a movie about this. A story of incompetent, greedy, arrogant criminals getting their just deserts resonates with me right now. Gives me hope that 45 and the gang will go down soon.
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KriArj was just the worst. I am so happy that they were so stupid, lowscale embezzlement of this type goes on all the time, but when you start taking crores and crores of money from multiple powerful people, then you are just asking to go to jail. Well, and disrespecting John Abraham, who does that?
On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 6:00 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I would go with all the weddings last year was really fun to watch!
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I’m so sick of celebrity weddings that I hope we are done for the entirety of 2019! No more picture overdoses, no more receptions, no more PDA, just please spare us!!
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Just, please please no ranbir-alia in 2019! I don’t like their relationship, and i also think that wedding will be exhausting and insane
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DeepVeer ki Shaadi was the one I personally enjoyed the most, closely followed by Sonam. There was just so much of a wait for Ranveer and Dips, and several times a wedding was teased and didn’t happen, and several breakup rumors. As a narrative it really worked. Sonam was super fun and I loved seeing the A list get trashed and dance like lunatics. #Metoo was important but let’s hope it’s just getting started.
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If we turn Sonam’s wedding into a miniseries just focused on the main event, we could turn DeepVeer into a miniseries that covers several years and ends with one episode that goes over the many many ceremonies.
On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 7:54 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Hirani is shaping up to be the first big 2019 scandal and given your hatred for Sanju I thought you’d appreciate this.
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I don’t know, it’s still pretty iffy so far as I can tell. And I have a bit of a soft spot for Hirani-the-person because he is a friend of a friendly acquaintance, so it’s close enough for me to have that kind of “oh, that’s sad” reaction instead of pure schadenfreude.
On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 8:29 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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