Fox Star Studios’ exit from film business puts a question mark over its three-film deal with Akshay Kumar

In November 2018, Fox Star Studios announced that it has signed a three-film deal with superstar Akshay Kumar’s banner Cape Of Good Films. It seemed like the beginning of a great association and obviously, it got the trade quite excited. The first movie as part of this partnership was Mission Mangal, the super-hit 2019 sci-fi drama. Fox and Akshay then followed it up with Laxmii. It was scheduled to release in cinemas on Eid 2020 but due to the shutting of theatres in the lockdown, it got a direct OTT release, on Disney+ Hotstar, on Diwali.

If you are wondering which would be the third film under this partnership, then sadly it seems it would not happen. A source says, “The three-film deal was signed after Akshay Kumar and Fox Star Studios enjoyed working with each other in Jolly LLB 2, one of the biggest hits of 2017, and a solo production of Fox. When the deal was signed in 2018, no one anticipated that the studio would exit the business and would be taken over by Disney. It seems that Disney is not interested in getting into film production in India. Also, it’ll prefer to keep intellectual property rights of the films, but our artistes and producers here don’t expect that from studios. As a result, it’s question mark on the future of this deal and whether this third film in question would be made in near future.”

We approached Disney’s team to ask about the said deal but they were unavailable for comment.

A trade expert adds, “Akshay Kumar is booked for the next two years. He’ll be shooting for Bachchan Pandey, Raksha Bandhan, Ram Setu, Mission Lion, Mudassar Aziz’s next, Yash Raj Films’ next, etc. He has finished shooting for Sooryavanshi, Bellbottom, Prithviraj and Atrangi Re and would be taking out time to promote these films as well. Even if this impending film gets made, it’ll only happen after mid-2022 or 2022-end.”

Also Read: SCOOP: Akshay Kumar INCREASES his acting fees from Rs. 117 to 135 crores for films slated to release in 2022

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