MUMBAI: Mahesh Bhatt may have discovered ‘serial kisser’ Emraan Hashmi, but now the film-maker is not too keen to work with him again.

"With ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai’ and ‘Murder 2’ Emraan has had phenomenal success. Today he is a major star. Having created a monster we will not let this monster devour us. He has other people to work with which will make him richer. He is our flesh but he does not have to work with us always. That is why Kunal Khemu is one of the major actors in whom we will invest. Even Randeep Hooda is a great actor. His potential has not been exploited properly. We will not lean on Emraan Hashmi only, otherwise we will become like everybody else. We will move away from the safety of being with Emraan," said Bhatt to the press.

Has this got something to do with the constant reports of differences between the actor and the film-maker?

 

Bhatt is non-committal when he says, "The world is not a static place. People change, change is the fact of life, even I am not the same anyway and neither is Emraan. I am happy that we have a actor, on whom people laughed and called him names, today is a star and industry bigwigs want to work with him. He is not my destination. There is no feud. I feel Kunal Khemu needs my support more than Emraan. If you ask me who I would support from the two of them I would go for Kunal.. Emraan is a star and he has support of the industry"

"I never felt that he should limit his sight to my understanding… I was wrong in advising him not to play Dawood for OUATIM. My protective thing was it would be bad for him to play the most demonised terrorist of all times. He went ahead and did the film and I respect that Emraan was right.. I was wrong", added Bhatt.

Emraan’s first break was in Mahesh Bhatt’s ‘Footpath, but he arrived only with his role in ‘Murder’ (2004).