MUMBAI: The hottest news yet, regarding Sajid Nadiadwala’s directorial debut ‘Kick’, starring the megalithic superstar Salman Khan himself has reached our keen ears… Buzz is that Nadiadwala has dropped Sonakshi Sinha, and has signed on Deepika Padukone for the film, to star opposite Khan.

Sonakshi has been allegedly dropped from the project due to her price hike. Apparently, Sajid had already signed the ‘Dabangg’ girl to star opposite Salman Khan, and had even paid her the signing amount. Nadiadwala did this with an aim to recreate the success of ‘Dabangg’ and ‘Dabangg 2’, where the duo was paired opposite each other. Further, Sonakshi’s other films like ‘Son of Sardar’ had also become 100-crore smashers, so Nadiadwala was confident of her lucky-mascot charm.

However, things didn’t work out once the ambitious Ms. Sinha decided to raise her price substantially. Nadiadwala naturally wasn’t too happy with this development, since he reportedly doesn’t believe that the actress had too much to do with the successes of her previous films. And so Nadiadwala promptly replaced her with Deepika.

Sources claim that money itself wasn’t an issue with the 46-year-old director, since Padukone anyway charges more per film than what Sinha had demanded. It was a question of ethics and business sense, as far as Nadiadwala was concerned.

Allegedly, Nadiadwala reasoned that if he had to pay more to the heroine, he might as well cast a bigger star in his film. Plus, the added benefit was the fresh pairing: since Deepika Padukone and Salman Khan haven’t done any film together as yet. Salman also is keen to work with Deepika, since he thinks she’s very pretty and has said so himself on several occasions. All’s well that ends well, in this tale of heroine-swap we say!