Akshay Kumar is Highest Selling Star in Mission Mangal, Hence Biggest Face on Poster: Sonakshi Sinha

Mission Mangal poster courted controversy for giving Akshay Kumar a bigger display than his women colleagues-- Vidya Balan, Taapsee Pannu, Sonakshi Sinha, Kirti Kulhari and Nithya Menon. Recently in an interview, Sonakshi who plays Eka Gandhi, one of the women who worked for the highly anticipated space mission, addressed the controversy.

"To all of us, it (Mission Mangal) was teamwork. Even while we were shooting, nobody was made to feel smaller than the other person, despite there being so many people. And the fact of the matter is that Akshay Kumar is the biggest star in the film," Sonakshi told Hindustan Times.

"Someone had told me very long back (smiles) and this line has stuck in my head: ‘Jo bikta hai, voh dikhta hai’. Today, if you see Akshay’s collections, he’s the highest-selling star in the entire film, that is why (his face is bigger on the poster)," she added.

In the same interview, she also talked about working in multi-starrer and her shift from potboiler commercial cinema to subject-oriented films lately. Answering the same, she said that she isn't insecure about her screen time because she's confident about it and a change in the subject of her films keep her engaged with her work.

Previously, Taapsee too had a similar opinion about Akshay getting a bigger display than his women colleagues. She justified it by saying that star value is a brutal truth. "We five being a part of it just makes it go higher. But the box office wouldn't have dropped even if we were not in the film. Pick up any of our films, the five ladies, add them together and compare the collection of the opening day of all those films with an Akshay Kumar movie," Taapsee told PTI.

Meanwhile, at the trailer launch of Mission Mangal, Akshay Kumar too addressed the flak that the poster received, assuring the audience that the film belongs to its female cast.

Mission Mangal, directed by Jagan Shakti, is based on real-life scientists, who contributed to India's first interplanetary expedition, Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), launched by Indian Research Space Organisation (ISRO) in 2013. The film releases on August 15.

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