There was tension, there were heartburns. And there were blame games.
While producer Kumar Mangat Pathak felt, he had been let down because producer Dinesh Vijan had made Bala on the same topic as his Ujda Chaman, Vijan thought, it was the other way around. Since the shooting of Ujda Chaman started much after Bala, Dinesh Vijan felt, he had been wronged by Pathak.
Kumar Mangat Pathak felt even worse because he had bought the official remaking rights of the Kannada film, Ondu Motteya Kathe, before venturing out to remake it in Hindi as Ujda Chaman. But Vijan claimed, his Bala had nothing to do with Ondu Motteya Kathe.
Then came the release drama. At one point, the producers of both, Bala and Ujda Chaman, announced their release in the same week. Vijan tried to steal a march over Ujda Chaman by declaring that his film would come a day earlier, on November 7. Rather than come a day after Bala, the makers of Ujda Chaman advanced their film’s release by a week. Dinesh Vijan followed suit and began planning the release of Bala on the same date — 1st November. That’s when Pathak dragged Vijan to court, accusing him of plagiarising his film’s story.
But the case was not pursued when Vijan and Jio Studios decided to not release Bala on 1st November, opting instead for the 7th November date. However, all the tension, heartburns and blame games now seem to be worthless because Ujda Chaman has turned out to be a damp squib at the ticket windows in spite of releasing solo.