Sanjay and Salman to get together for Karan’s project?

It’s one interesting takeover — and a pretty smooth one at that — not counting the ruffled feathers and the bruised egos. What was meant to be a Karan Johar-Salman Khan project is now a Sanjay Leela Bhansali-Salman project.

We are talking about the screen adapation of Amish Tripathi’s epic novel The Immortals Of Meluha, which Karan Johar wanted to make with Salman Khan for the longest time. The project, then titled Shuddhi for the screen, was to be directed by Karan Malhotra, the same director who did Agneepath for Karan Johar.

After a relentless pursuit and an endless wait, the project came to a thumping halt, with Salman opting out unceremoniously from Karan Johar’s production plans, resulting in the shutting down of the project.

Now, when Sanjay acquired the filming rights of Amish’s book, he also spoke to Salman about doing the film version of the novel, which will obviously no more be titled Shuddhi.

Apparently, Salman has agreed to be part of the project, provided Sanjay directs the film himself. The Bajirao Mastani director has shared a troubled relationship with Salman ever since they fell out over Shah Rukh Khan’s casting in Devdas. The two on-and-off best friends did patch up for Saawariya, but the truce proved short lived. However, lately, Salman and Sanjay have made a concerted effort to clear up their differences and also agreed to work together in a hand-chosen project.

Now that the Sanjay-Salman project is locked in, one wonders what happens to the troubled Sanjay-Karan relationship. The two have altercated publicly in the past and said quite some unflattering things about each other in the press. While Sanjay’s relationship with Salman went through rough weather, Karan stealthily tried to build a bridge across the troubled waters with the actor.

Unfortunately, none of the projects Karan proposed to Salman, be it Shuddhi, or the historical The Battle Of Saragarhi that he was supposed co-produce with Salman with Akshay Kumar in the lead, seems to work out.

Meanwhile, Sanjay and Salman are back together, a move that further weakens Karan’s  chances of working with Salman.