Salman Khan rejects Chetan Bhagat's script

Chetan Bhagat is rarely short of words, but Salman Khan reportedly left him searching for them. The bestselling author, trying his hand at screenwriting for Sajid Nadiadwala's Kick, submitted his first draft — and the star sent it back.

According to reports at the time, Bhagat and Nadiadwala met Salman to walk him through the script's progress. Salman read it in front of them, and the longer he read, the clearer it became that he wasn't pleased. His verdict, delivered politely: the draft hadn't captured the essence of the film — an adaptation of a Telugu hit — and needed to be more commercial.

Bhagat had admitted beforehand that the assignment was daunting. Two of his novels had already become successful films, but this was his first time building a screenplay from scratch — "It is Salman Khan, it is as big as it gets," he'd said. After the meeting, he was reportedly back at his desk rewriting.

There is a small, telling lesson in the episode about how Bollywood actually works: the star is the final script editor. Authors may write the words, but in the star system, "more commercial" is a note that outranks all of them. Bhagat, never one to shy from a rewrite, took it in stride — or at least, that's the version where nobody's feelings got hurt.