Republic Day 2018 will see two big films of the year colliding with each other. On the one side, we will see Neeraj Pandey with his action-packed patriotic film, ‘ Aiyaary ’, on the other hand, Neeraj’s close friend Akshay Kumar is coming up with a social message driven movie ‘ Padman ’. ‘ Padman ’s trailer released a few days ago and got a brilliant response from the masses, while Aiyaary ’s trailer will be out today and people are equally excited about Neeraj’s film. Well, it’s for sure that both the movies are clashing on the same date and when a leading daily asked Neeraj about the big collision, he said, “We knew from day one that Aiyaary would come on January 26, 2018, because the subject lends itself to this date. I don’t concern myself with what other people are doing. The decisions we take involve several other people who rally behind the project and calls are taken after a lot of deliberations. I believe the films are chalk and cheese so there is no issue with them releasing together.”

In a decade-long journey, Neeraj has worked on a total of 5 films with Akshay Kumar and now their films will be pitted against each other. While Neeraj directed ‘ Special 26 ’ and ‘ Baby ’, he was the writer and producer behind ‘ Rustom ’, ‘ Naam Shabana ’ and ‘ Toilet: Ek Prem Katha ’. Akshay and Neeraj were supposed to collaborate for yet another film, titled, ‘ Crack ’ and when the same was asked to the filmmaker, he said, “It’s (Crack) on the backburner for now as I’m not happy with the way the script has shaped up. When I find the time, I’ll go back to the material and see how it can be reworked.”