Though every award is special, the kind of attention and popularity Indian International Film Academy (IIFA) awards have gained for the last few years has surprised one and all. The two major reasons, which have contributed to the immense popularity of these awards, which were started in the 2000 only, have been that they are being promoted by one and only Mr. Amitabh Bachchan himself, who is the ambassador of IIFA and secondly as they are always held out of India, they offer a free trip abroad to all our Bollywood stars.
But, now it seems that with many big producers shooting a major portion of their films abroad, at least the craze among a lot of Bollywood stars has ended or considerably reduced.
This was evident considering most of big Bollywood stars have said a big no to attending this year’s IIFA awards, to be held at Macau.
To start with, coming back after his injury, Shahrukh Khan along with Karan Johar and Kajol is said to be busy shooting for My Name Is Khan and will give
IIFA a miss.
Akshay is said to have pulled out since the date of the award function coincides with vacation he has planned with his family after months of hard work.
Both Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan will be at London at that point of time, where they are promoting Saif Ali Khan’s first home production Love Aaj Kal at the ongoing T20 World Cup.
Likewiase, both Shahid Kapoor and Salman Khan have also made it clear that they will not be attending the award ceremony as both have a tight shooting schedule, they cannot miss. Whereas Shahid is busy with Ken Ghosh’s new movie, Salman is giving most of his time to his two make or break projects for him, Wanted Dead Or Alive and Veer.
The latest entry in Bollywood, Imran Khan will also skip the ceremony as he is allegedly said to be tired of sharing the debutant trophy with Farhan Akhtar and doesn’t want to do so all over again.
Needless to say, with all these stars marked absent, this years IIFA award function isn’t going to be all that glittering. But, when it comes to the organizers of the event, they have even bigger problems to deal with. This came to light when, having limited stars to choose from, when the organizers asked Ranbir Kapoor to perform on songs originally performed by other artists, he simply refused to obliged saying he will only perform on his own songs.
By the way, if all the above celebrities were not enough, Arjun Rampal, John Abraham, Preity Zinta, Hrithik Roshan, Ajay Devgan, Fardeen Khan and Sanjay Dutt are also going to give this year’s IIFA a miss.
