Sulking Salman won't work with John

Directed by Rituparno Ghosh, the film is a remake of Guru Dutt's 1962 classic. After he read that producer Pritish Nandy had signed John to play Bhootnath, one of the two major male characters, Salman smsed Nandy and told him to reconsider. A source says, "Salman asked Pritish to keep him out of the project if they were keen on working with John. He also suggested to Pritish that he consider Shiney Ahuja for Bhootnath and not John. Salman was not even interested in Rituparno Ghosh because of his friendship with Aishwarya Rai. But somehow he agreed to work with him because he is a talented director. But he refused to work with John."

Salman Khan plays the role of the zamindar (originally played by Rehman) with Priyanka Chopra. The source said the project has been "gathering dust for years, because Salman Khan has been citing a date problem. He has too many commitments and he doesn't want to start the film right now."

Now, Rituparno and PNC are keen on having Salman Khan in the film because he is a bigger star, but they are stuck with project because they can't say no to John. When contacted Nandy said, "I have been reading about Salman and John war in media and I have no clue about what's going on between them. Both the actors have committed dates to me and I think they will be professional enough to treat is as a project and not come with personal issues. I am not going to shelve the project, it will happen sooner or later, but I will make Sahib Biwi Ghulam."

A report said the war between the two was over the 2006 Rockstar tour, when Salman asked John to do a concert free and John refused.

A few weeks ago when John was interviewed by a channel and he was asked about Salman he said, "If you ask me today also what the problem is between us, honestly, I don't know, but it's unfortunate that there is a problem. And if things get okay it will be nice."

Since John and Sallu returned from the Rockstar world tour, the tension between them became conspicuous. If there was any room for doubt, Salman's snubs and nasty comments about model-turned-actor John, erased them. When asked in an interview, how he feels about John, Salman said, "I must say he makes politically correct statements!" And when he was asked to guess who John considered his fitness icon, Salman said with a straight face, "Who? Anil Kapoor?"

He made his dislike for John even more evident, when he blamed the second half of Baabul as responsible for the film's bad performance at the box-office. Incidentally, Salman is present only in the first half of the film and the second half revolves around John. And when asked if he had stopped talking to John, he retorted, "But when did we start talking?"

Neither John nor Salman have spoken openly about the reasons behind their silent war but members of the 'Rockstar' team say, "There was definitely a problem between the two on this show and a lot of it was in Salman's head. You see, Salman had appointed himself the unofficial rock star of the concerts. But John kept getting as much frenzied applause on stage as Salman did. This hurt Salman's ego. Also the fact that John kept to his own space, hung around with his best friend whom he had taken along on the tour, instead of joining Salman's coterie, really hurt Salman. He's basically like a child who wants and needs constant attention."