Aiyaary director Neeraj Pandey quells rumours of unhealthy competition with Akshay Kumar

Akshay Kumar’s highly anticipated film _PadMan_ and his long time collaborator Neeraj Pandey’s next Aiyaary, starring Sidharth Malhotra, are up for a box office clash on 25 January, 2018. [caption id=“attachment_4266011” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Sidharth Malhotra and Manoj Bajpayee in a still from Aiyaary. Twitter@Aiyaary[/caption] However, the release date is not accompanied by any high voltage Bollywood drama this time as Pandey quelled any rumours of unhealthy competition at the trailer  launch of Aiyaary. He shared with the media that he sat down to lunch with Akshay Kumar and PadMan director R Balki, along with Sidharth Malhotra. “About four days ago, Sidharth, me, Akshay and Balki had lunch together. That was a good lunch. We all came out smiling,” said Neeraj, as reported by The Indian Express. He added, “What can I say about PadMan? When our film was launched, we wanted to come on 26 January, 2018. That’s the journey of the film and we are looking forward to it,” said Neeraj, as reported by The Indian Express. Kumar and Pandey have collaborated on three back-to-back hits —  Baby, Special 26 and Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. While PadMan is a story of the real-life achievements of social entrepreneur Arunachalam Muruganantham, who is noted for creating low cost sanitary napkins for rural Indian women, Aiyaary is about the fallout and subsequent face-off between two army officers, a protege (Sidharth) and a mentor (Manoj Bajpayee). Come Republic Day weekend, audiences definitely have two prospective blockbusters to choose from and hopefully neither the filmmaker nor the fans will be on the losing end.