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19 March 2024

‘Joker’ song leak a reality or a publicity stunt?

Published
By Bindu Suresh Rai

As the world clicks on at a faster growth rate than ever before, Bollywood filmmakers cannot afford to ignore the juggernaut that looms in form of the online social media portals that lure millions across the world to chatter, opine or simply promote at will, should they please.

Yet, even as social media continues to spread its tentacles globally, there are those who are shrewdly utilising this free marketing tool to serve up publicity stunts for a five-minute twirl in the spotlight, banking on the trend those few minutes could very well stretch to 15.

Z-grade celebs such as Poonam Pandey and Sheryln Chopra have turned the tool into a platform of a skin show fest, while the likes of Kamaal R Khan are accused of using it to flatter their inflated egos by turning cheap tweets into talking points.

However, such flash in the pan stunts come with a short shelf life and live in perpetual danger of backfiring if done wrong. In the case of Shirish Kunder, Farah Khan and their magnum opus, ‘Joker’, fans are finding this latest ‘leak’ a difficult one to plug.

The makers of the Akshay Kumar-Sonakshi Sinha starrer have been burning up the twitterfeeds in supposed outrage as an item song from the UTV Motion Pictures produced ‘Joker’ leaked onto YouTube, before going viral on Twitter and Facebook.

The song, “I want fakht you”, has been picturised on Chitragandha Singh and has been touted as the dance hit of 2012 to rival ‘Agneepath’s’ “Chikni Chameli”.

As soon as news broke, singer Sunidhi Chauhan tweeted to director Kunder and choreographer and his wife Khan to say: “Is this true? Our song from ‘Joker’ has been leaked? Can’t believe it. We just recorded those lines the other day. [sic]”

Khan immediately responded with outrage, saying: “What the ****! Just found out that our ‘Joker’ song has been leaked on Youtube. Will get a heart attack today for sure.”

However, many fans started to doubt the whole move as a planned leak, when Kunder’s response to the whole piracy was: “What the F**** song leaked? I am calling the plumber.”

For a director whose album’s most coveted song has made it online even before the trailer launch, many online were quizzing the rather tame outrage.

As the story developed via Twitter chatter, it was soon evident that the song which made it online was the older version, which had been changed to ‘I want just you.’

Music composer Vishal Dadlani spilled the beans, tweeting: “But we changed the song ‘I want fakht you’ to ‘I want just you’ some time ago. This is the old version that has leaked.”

Khan tweeted the same to Chauhan.

The play between the filmmakers had many on Twitter openly criticising this entire fiasco as a cheap publicity stunt, accusing them of using the podium to plug a song that hasn’t made a cut into the final album, so why not use it to generate a buzz around the film, which releases in the UAE on August 30 across UAE cinemas.

Tehrasminator wrote: “Totally don’t believe the ‘Joker’ song has been leaked. A PR stunt for sure.”

Dorkstar added: “Farah Khan must be devastated that her carefully leaked new song of ‘Joker’ has been overshadowed by Swami Agnivesh taking a leak.”

Meanwhile Swati R wrote: “Which ‘Joker’ came up with this cheap idea of a publicity stunt?”

UTV has also taken this opportunity to release the trailer of the film, which has been generating quite a positive buzz on its own merit.