There was a shocker in the newspapers yesterday. In a full page ad in a Mumbai daily, T Series announced its impressive line up of films slated for release in 2018. Starting with the Ajay Devgn and Ileana D’Cruz starrer Raid in March and ending with Kedarnath in December that has Sushant Singh Rajput and Sara Ali Khan in her debut film. There’s also Shahid Kapoor’s Batti Gul Meter Chalu coming out in August. However, T Series has not mentioned whether Katrina Kaif is acting opposite the Padmavati maharaja in this social drama by Shree Narayan Singh (Toilet: Ek Prem Katha) on electricity theft. But what’s shockingly missing in this line up is the big film T Series announced last March with Akshay Kumar titled Mogul. There’s no mention of it. Nor are T Series sources or the actor saying anything about the biopic that was to be made on the production house’s founder Gulshan Kumar.

https://twitter.com/akshaykumar/status/841861776497074176

When Mogul was announced in March, T Series tweeted the poster. Akshay did the same and wrote, “My association with Him began with my very first film. He was The Emperor of Music. Now know His story... #Mogul, The Gulshan Kumar story!” Subhash Kapoor, who worked with Akshay in Jolly LLB 2 earlier this year, was roped in to direct the film. The actor, who is known never to forget people who helped him – especially in his difficult times, was reportedly enthusiastic to do Mogul. Akshay said in March, “I had the good fortune of knowing Gulshanji well and had a close association with him right from my first film Sugandh in 1991. We shared many things in common and come from a similar background. I am very excited to play him on screen.” Subhash was excited and disbelieving. “I always told my team that the one story I would love to make a film on was Gulshanji’s and here I am doing just that,” the director said. While the late mogul’s son Bhushan Kumar, who runs T Series, said it was “a dream come true”.

With so much in its favour, why wasn’t Mogul announced then as one of T Series’ big ticket releases of 2018? The film was supposed to go on the floor in the first quarter of 2018 but now it’s not happening at all. Buzz in the industry is that Akshay backed out due to some reservations in the film’s script. A blind item in a premier trade magazine deemed the absence of Mogul from T Series' 2018 list as "suspicious". While other sources said Akshay, who already had two big hits in 2017 with Jolly LLB 2 and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, suddenly found he had his hands full in 2018 with Padman, 2.0, Gold and Kesari and didn’t want to take on more. But that’s not confirmed news. And the fate of Mogul remains as mysterious as the death of the Bollywood mogul in 1997 on whom it was being made.