Bollywood is engaged in a bloodless round of tit-for-tat currently over the titles of two potential films. The main players in this seesaw battle for title supremacy are filmmakers Vipul Shah, Shailendra Singh and if you will believe it, Akshay Kumar as producer. The fight is over the rights to the titles of two films, Singh Is Kinng and Namastey London.

The story goes that Shailendra Singh was keen on making a sequel to Vipul Shah’s hit 2008 action comedy Singh Is Kinng in which Akshay Kumar clawed his way back to being among Bollywood’s most bankable superstars. Shailendra Singh even had Ranveer Singh in mind for Akshay’s role. But Vipul Shah, who has the copyright to Singh Is Kinng, won’t part with the title.

Vipul Shah, perhaps, learned how to be uncooperative from Akshay himself. Earlier this year, he had to rename his Namastey London sequel as Namastey Canada because Akshay, who owns the intellectual rights to the titles Namastey England and Namastey London 2, refused to part with them.

Shailendra Singh must be kicking himself because it was he who created the franchise and owned the title and he gifted it to Akshay who in turn gifted it to Vipul Shah! “They thanked me for the title in the credits,” Shailendra Singh says, “but now when I beg Vipul Shah to return it to me, he won’t listen.”

Vipul Shah’s contention is that he intends to make the sequel to his 2008 big grosser himself. But Shailendra Singh argues, “It is nine years since Singh Is Kinng was made and Vipul Shah obviously won’t be making the sequel. So why not gracefully give the title back to me?”

Better sense seems to have prevailed on the embittered filmmaker because, with a surge of hope, Shailendra Singh has now announced that his film has a new name and it’s “sexier than Singh Is Kinng”. Ranveer Singh is also gung-ho about the title and Shailendra Singh has moved ahead. Bollywood sources wonder why so much of fuss was being made around a title because films these days don’t run on titles alone. Other films with Akshay Kumar playing the ‘Singh is Kinng’ character have come to a cropper at the box office. But maybe Shailendra Singh though Ranveer Singh, who he says is a lethal combination of Salman Khan and Johnny Depp, would bring new magic and life to the role.