Box Office Score: Rohit Shetty (2) vs Akshay Kumar (0)

Yes, Once Upon a Time at the Box Office, err sorry Twice Upon A Time the Box Office, the Indian audiences were treated with a clash of similar concord. The Rohit Shetty v/s Akshay Kumar date clashes have gone down the roads of history in a strikingly strange manner. Akshay who had always been the flavour of the season, since his Hera Pheri days, when he rose like a phoenix, has been ironically touted as the biggest brand at the box office at a time when Salman Khan had no Dabangg under his name. But the years 2009 and 2010 consecutively had a backlash between the director and actor who have been instrumental in shaping up Indian comedy from its declining stages.

With the audiences going gaga over the SRK versus Akshay clash this Eid, with no Salmania around, we bring about the score card of a War that had been running since the 2009s and with this Eid, the scores might just settle in, once and for all.

Flashback to Diwali 2009 and you would recall how Akshay’s Blue was pitted against Rohit Shetty’s Ajay Devgn starrer All The Best! On one hand, you had an actor who gave back to back hits and on the other you had one director who was potentially capable of turning tables. And voila! Despite an interesting premise and an anticipated hype, the Akki starrer failed to strike a chord with the masses, falling in to the shackles of the deep blue sea, sinking without a trace. Though Blue had a better opening weekend at the box office, All The Best scored more eventually, courtesy, some rib tickling comic sequences, a Rohit Shetty trademark that kept the audiences enthralled and entertained, sans a strong script!

The coming year, the 2010s, saw yet another roll-rumble between the actor and the director with both their films again releasing on the same day, yet another Diwali edition, darling! The time machine formula going kaput with a rather dismal and highly irritating Action Replayy, doing no good to Akki’s career graph, the film hardly managed to rise above see-level, although it bragged of a powerful star cast. Akshay’s terrible hairdo made matters even worse while Rohit Shetty’s Golmaal 3 raked in all the moolah, and received a thunderous response, thanks to a brilliant mad cap comic caper that the franchise boasted of! Not just that, Golmaal 3 shuddered in a lot of punch in the following weeks, to collect over 100 crores, easily enlisting its membership into the coveted 100 crore club, that had suddenly gained repute!

And now with a 2-0 lead over the actor, Rohit Shetty’s Chennai Express, which has already been one of the most euphoric movies of the year, with Shah Rukh in the lead in yet another romantic flick, one would be expecting firecrackers from the director yet again. Battle lines are drawn and the trumpets are blowing in full throttle as our Khiladi Kumar with Balaji scion, Ekta Kapoor in tow is expecting an earth shattering opening with a sequel to a film that had changed the Bollywood-gangster flick scenario way back in the 2010s. Though the SRK-Akshay combat is grabbing headlines much due to the heavyweight names, it is the Rohit Shetty v/s Akshay Kumar age old encounter that is all set to go on a mammoth ravage!

With Diwali being sidelined and Eid being the D-Day for yet another Rohit Shetty-Akshay Kumar collision, let’s just wait and watch how the scorecard settles, post the festive season. Will the Rohit-SRK combo walk alway with all the cheese and the cake or will Akshay bounce back to triumphant form giving Rohit and the Chennai Express team a shuddering jolt? Take your pick!