MUMBAI : The kiss and tell game between item girl Rakhi Sawant and singer Mika Singh has helped Rakhi’s brother Rakesh Sawant’s directorial debut film Hot Money. Made on a shoestring budget of Rs 6 million, this non-starrer film (Tarun Arora, Divya Dwivedi, Nilanjana, Kunika, Rati Agnihotri, Tinu Anand, Mukesh Tiwari) beat director Ashu Y. Trikha and ace photographer-turned-producer Subi Samuel’s Alag starring Dia Mirza, Akshay Kapoor and Tom Alter at the box-office. Model-turned-actress Divya Dwivedi took the initiative of hosting the success party on behalf of producer Nick Patel on June 19 at Pappilon.

It’s been a blessing in disguise for Rakesh Sawant and producing Nick Patel for striking gold. Hot Money is declared a hit and the overflow has been coming to its distributors from Monday onwards. The film had been sold for Rs. 1 million per territory. Rakesh Sawant was grinning from ear to ear. He said, “My sister features only in an item number. I’m happy that my film is raking money for the distributors.

The film is doing well in Mumbai, Delhi-U.P., Bihar and entire South.” In Mumbai the film was released by Crystal distributors, the first timers, and a division of R.G.V. (Ram Gopal Varma’s distribution company) in association with Goldie Films. They had released 10 prints; 5 in Bombay and the rest 5 in other circuits of Bombay circuits, but excluding Saurashtra where the film was not released.