R Madhavan and writer Chetan Bhagat engaged in a war of words on Twitter, and the users of the platform are loving it as much as popcorn time. The spat on the micro-blogging site later appeared to be a promotional run for the recently premiered Netflix series Decoupled. The show stars Madhavan as India’s second best-selling author and Chetan appears as himself. They are constantly competing with each other in the show.
The banter between Madhavan and Chetan started when the actor said that the film 3 Idiots was better than the author’s book Five Point Someone. The gimmick was centered around the ‘movies vs books’ debate. 3 Idiots directed by Rajkumar Hirani was released in 2009. The coming-of-age comedy drama also starred Aamir Khan and Sharman Joshi in key roles. The film was a success and won three National Film Awards including Best Popular Film.
Madhavan mentioned, in a tweet, that he is biased towards films. “Hey Chetan… My bias is movies > books,” he wrote. The author responded, “Have you ever heard anyone ever say the movie is better than the book?” The exchange slowly picked up pace and the two did not stop taking swipes at each other, of course all in good humour.
Fans started speculating the basis and alleged that both Madhavan and Chetan were pulling each other’s legs as part of a promotional stunt. Confirming this, Madhavan replied to a Twitter user saying, “Hey of course it’s scripted. Chetan Bhagat is my bro. We are just doing the publicity drill.” Chetan also replied to the actor’s tweet and wrote, “Love you bro.” The verbal jousting ended on a cordial note war of words on a good note.
Decoupled, also starring Surveen Chawla, debuted on December 17 on the streaming giant.
