Director Madhur Bhandarkar has accused Karan Johar and Dharma productions CEO of stealing the title of his upcoming project, Bollywood Wives, and tweaking it for the Netflix web series Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives. The Fashion director took to Twitter to express his disapproval on the title of the web series. He requested Karan Johar to change the name of the Netflix series.
In his tweet, Madhur Bhadarkar informed internet users that he had refused Karan Johar and Apoorva Mehta's request to let them use the title Bollywood Wives as his project was underway. He said that it is ethically and morally wrong to tweak the title of his upcoming project and use it for their series. He wrote, "Dear @karanjohar, U & @apoorvamehta18 had asked me 4 the title #BollywoodWives for web, which I refused, as my project is underway. It is Morally & ethically wrong u to tweak it to #TheFabulousLivesofBollywoodWives. Pls do not dent my project. I humbly request u to change the title (sic)."
Apart from the request via social media, Madhur Bhandarkar has also filed a complaint against Dharma Productions with Indian Motion Pictures Producers' Association (IMPPA). After Madhur's complaint, IMPPA wrote to Guild which responded by saying that they haven't issued the title to the makers for the web series. IMPPA has now reportedly written a letter to Dharma Productions as well as the OTT platform asking them to change the title of their web series. Karan and Apoorva are yet to reply to Bhandarkar’s allegations. The series that is set to stream from November 27 on Netflix — 'Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives' revolves around the lives of four ‘star’ wives – Seema Khan (wife of Sohail Khan), Maheep Kapoor (wife of Sanjay Kapoor), Bhavana Pandey (wife of Chunky Panday) and Neelam Kothari Soni (wife of Samir Soni).