Ishaan Khatter who made his debut with Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi's Beyond The Clouds and followed it up a few months later with Karan Johar's Dhadak last year was all set to headline Vishal Bhardwaj's first Netflix series based on Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children. However, Ishaan backed out of the project at the last moment and this, we heard, has occurred after a massive fall out between the actor and director. 

An industry source informed us, "Although Vishal Bhardwaj is a master at adapting literacy works for screen and has successfully given Indian flavour to several global works of literature, Midnight's Children is proving to be a daunting project for him. The filmmaker is passionately working on the script and was set to roll the project in the next few months with an expected stellar cast on board. He had approached Ishaan Khatter to play the protagonist and narrator of the story, Saleem Sinai a few months back. Ishaan had happily agreed and instantly came on board with only paperwork left to be done. However, just two days before signing the contract Ishaan backed out of the series. This has not gone down well with the filmmaker which led to a rift in their relationship." 

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Apparently, Ishaan and Bhardwaj had several creative differences over the script. "Ishaan was not happy with the way the series was interpreted. He felt it was too similar to the version of Deepa Mehta's 2012 film which was based on the same book. Ishaan wanted massive changes to the script and had some reservations about his character too. Vishal agreed to adopt some changes but that wasn't enough to hold him on board," the source further said clarifying that the filmmaker and actor didn't part ways "amicably" at all as reported. 

Meanwhile, Bhardwaj has now moved on. We heard the filmmaker is now looking for a new face to replace Ishaan and casting for the same has already begun in Mumbai. Ishaan, on the other hand, has also signed two new films after backing out of the web-series. While one of them is said to be Ali Abbas Zafar's maiden production which will be directed by one of his ADs, the details of the second project are yet unknown. 

(Source: Peeping Moon)