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Who's the hero in Waaris?

Waaris, as the title suggests, is a story that will decide the next heir apparent. Smriti Iraani's show was meant to go this way but the show went for a toss when it lost one of its heirs. Yuvraj Malhotra, who played the character of Shaurya was booted from the show. Apparently, the competition here extended beyond finding a Waaris.

If sources are to be believed, Iqbal Khan, who plays Shaurya's elder brother Shankar, wasn't particularly pleased with Yuvraj Malhotra being projected as the real hero of the show. In an interview to a prominent paper, Iqbal was quoted as saying that he was contemplating quitting the show. When asked about it Iqbal had messaged us saying that he would quit a show because of its content and for no other reasons.

While Iqbal and the production house are reportedly pleased with Yuvraj's ouster, the channel fought tooth and nail in their bid to save their poster boy. Tales of Yuvraj's affair with a top notch Zee official are now well documented. It's this connection that Yuvraj was banking on to bail him out of this mess.

The production was in no mood to relent and what further irked them, and Iqbal, was how Yuvraj kept on projecting himself as the real deal.

A source from the production says, "Iqbal doesn't need to shout from the rooftop to say that he's the hero. As far as we are concerned Shankar is and will forever be the main character of our show. If there's no Shankar then there will be no Waaris. It's as simple as that. Yuvraj can say whatever he wants but the fact remains that it's Iqbal and not him who is the hero of our show."

Well, the tensions not just between Yuvraj and Iqbal but the production too is unhappy with the channel over the time slot. "The 11.00 pm slot is simply working against us. We've long been pitching for a change but thus far there has no positive response from the channel. There's no way that you can draw high numbers at this slot. They've got Ranbir Rano at 10.30 pm which his hovering around 1 TRP mark," added our source.

If Yuvraj fails to return to the show then his successor must learn to live in the shadow of Iqbal or else he too might suffer the same fate.

Smriti's Waaris to wind up

After Pariwaar, now Waaris on Zee TV will go off air just after 3 months of its start.

The show never had more than a lukewarm response despite having a story line that ran different from the usual soaps.
A source said the channel was pulling the plug because the serial wasn't going in the desired direction. Another reason cited was that the production house - owned by Smriti Irani - had sacked the channel favourite Yuvraj Malhotra from the show.

Ajay Balwankar, Zee TV's programming head said: "Waaris was an experiment, it could not get a good response from the viewers and will be called off soon".

Shilpa Shinde, who plays the lead on the show was unaware of the show's impending demise. "It's been doing pretty well... we've not been told anything of the sort by the channel or the production house," she said.

Iqbal Khan, the lead actor, seconded that and said that the "excellent story line" of the show went in favour of it. The story line is lifted from Sarkar Raj, so could the failure of the movie be echoed in the failure of the serial?

"No, absolutely not!" he said, "they're both entirely different."

How the show will end is still to be decided. Some episodes are yet to be shot. For the moment, given the strike in Bollywood, all channels are running old episodes. Sources said the date of the final episode was not yet fixed but would be once the strike ended.

The story was based on the life of a don who is in search of his true 'waaris', as he wants his son to grow his criminal career further.

http://www.indya.com/news/newsDetails.aspx?xfile=2008/November/News_20081115_78

Strike Called Off

After 10 days the producers' strike has finally been called off. And all telly fans can heave a sigh of relief as the production houses will resume filming tonight itself so that fresh episodes can be aired from Monday onwards. We spoke to the vice president of the producer's association Dheeraj Kumar who heads Creative Eye a production house.