Almost a decade ago John had starred in ' Jism ' but he was not seen in ' Jism 2 '. It has now been learnt that originally John and not Emraan Hashmi was the first choice of the Bhatts for this movie. But since he could not make time from his busy schedule to listen to the script, they finally decided to rope in Randeep Hooda .

There were rumours that John is being hard on the Bhatts and not giving time for the narration. But it should be remembered that he is successful and a busy actor too. Today his name is associated with multi-crore flicks such as ' Housefull 2 ', ' Race 2 ', ' Shootout At Wadala ', etc. and hence it can be easily digested that he is busy. Bhatts have revealed that he did not reject the ' Jism 2 ' script as the rumours had been rife. They said that John could not even get time to hear the script!

Mahesh Bhatt has denied any ill will with the actor. He said that at one point of time they had certainly approached John but the actor couldn't spare date for their meetings. Therefore, after waiting for long, they had to move on with their project without John and signed Randeep for ' Jism 2 '.

Bhatt was quoted saying, "Such things happen, people get busy and you can't blame them. It is a practical situation if his dates could not tally for our meeting. Otherwise he was very respectful all throughout. In fact he used to say that he was keen to discuss the project. It would be wrong if someone assumes that he was playing hard that was not the case."