Love You Rachchu: Producer Guru Deshpande jumps to the defence of director Shankar after fallout with Ajai Rao

With only days to go for the release of the Ajai Rao-starrer Love You Rachchu, it struck everyone that the leading man was not attending major events related to the film. It turns out, as revealed earlier this week, that Ajai and producer Guru Deshpande have been having differences of opinion for a while, which has now come to a head. Ajai has now publicly stated that he will not share a stage with the team to promote the film, but will instead do so in his personal capacity, as the movie is dear to him.

The issues between Guru and Ajai are about who has directed the film, with the producer claiming it is newbie Shankar, while Ajai says he’s done most of the heavy lifting. Speaking to the media, Guru jumped to Shankar’s defence, saying, “When a newbie director does a film with a hero who has done 20-25 movies, chances are that there may be minor shortcomings in the proceedings on set. The problem is that people from North Karnataka have a fearful respect for others. That’s the issue Shankar has; he would not even go and sit next to the leading lady, Rachita Ram. For that matter, he does not even speak much and there was a communication gap. Love You Rachchu is a film that for about 80% of its runtime is dependent only on the hero and the heroine. Ajai would help with communicating with Rachita about scenes and that is all that he has done – this does not make him the director of the film. Love You Rachchu has been made by Shankar S Raj.”