Amit Mehra: “The 'Zanjeer' dispute is between my brother & Salim-Javed”

Producer Amit Mehra who is remaking his illustrious father Prakash Mehra’s 1973 Amitabh Bachchan classic Zanjeer is embroiled in a remake-compensation battle with his own brother Punit Mehra. Punit has apparently gone to court for the compensation amount due to him to relinquish remake rights to Amit. But Amit says he has already submitted the due money in the honourable court and that the dispute is not between the Mehra brothers but between Punit Mehra and Salim-Javed the scriptwriters of the original Zanjeer who have legally staked a claim to compensation for the remake. Says the harassed Amit, “The money is with the honourable court. Now it’s up to the legal procedure to validate who’s to get the compensation. Punit or Salim-Javed.” On his part Amit is immensely embarrassed by the family dispute coming out into the open. “Among us three brothers only I seem to have inherited our father’s passion for cinema. My brothers seem to have no interest in movies. It means every time I want to remake one of my father’s films I’ve to get into a compensation conflict with them. I’m willing to bear the pain as long as our father’s legacy is carried forward.” Amit who grew up fascinated by his father’s films including Zanjeer is very happy with the results of the remake so far. “We’ve shot some exceptional sequences between Ramcharan Teja and Priyanka Chopra in Hyderabad. Now we move to Mumbai for action sequences between Mr Sanjay Dutt and Ramcharan Teja. I think Papa would have been proud of what we’ve done.”