Before OMG 2 became a massive hit with Akshay Kumar in the lead, the story apparently started somewhere else entirely, with Paresh Rawal and director Amit Rai, and without any divine character at all. Now, Paresh has opened up about how the film changed hands, changed direction and eventually left him out altogether.
Paresh Rawal says the original idea came from him. He’d long admired Amit Rai’s work on Road to Sangam and approached him with a concept for a new film, offering to help shape the story even though he didn’t consider himself a writer.
The plot he pitched followed a schoolboy who is filmed during a private, embarrassing moment, and the video spreads until his life is turned upside down. His father then decides to fight back against the humiliation being heaped on his son. Paresh Rawal explained that the father was originally written as a tourist guide at the Khajuraho temple, which Amit later suggested changing to a part-time priest at the Mahakal Temple. The two of them developed the script together and even consulted s*xologist Dr. Prakash Kothari, since they wanted the film to be educational and entertaining without being crude. According to Paresh, they held many meetings to get the tone right.
He said the script was later pitched to Anurag Kashyap and then to Somen Mishra of Dharma Productions, who, Paresh says, immediately felt it wouldn’t work.
Importantly, Paresh insists this was never meant to be a sequel to the original OMG. Rather than bringing God into the story, he wanted a biker character to help guide the father through his fight, similar in spirit to Kader Khan’s role in Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, since the conflict here was about a father seeking justice, not a case against God like in the first film.
For that biker role, Paresh Rawal says he reached out to Ajay Devgn and Salman Khan but deliberately avoided approaching Akshay Kumar, worried it would immediately make people assume the film was a direct OMG sequel, which it wasn’t supposed to be.
According to Paresh Rawal, the project was still in an early, undecided stage when Akshay’s name started coming up. He recalls a meeting with producer Vipul Shah of Optimystix, where Akshay’s involvement was also raised, Paresh says he made clear that if he’d wanted Akshay involved, he would have approached him directly himself, since the two had already worked together as partners on the original OMG.
Not long after, Paresh Rawal says Amit Rai called to tell him that Akshay Kumar wanted to do the film. He also mentioned that the script already had “OMG 2” written on it as a placeholder title, simply because the subject matter felt similar. Paresh believes the script made its way to Akshay through producer Ashwin Varde, who he recalls being present at one of their meetings around the time the decision was made to move forward with Akshay.
Once things shifted in that direction, Paresh Rawal told Amit Rai he wanted to step away from the project. He says he chose not to fight it, since Amit was a friend, even though he claims he repeatedly urged the team not to turn the story into a franchise, insisting it was never meant to be one. They went ahead regardless.
Akshay Kumar later personally asked Paresh Rawal to be part of the film but Paresh turned it down, explaining that the version being made no longer resembled the story he’d originally envisioned — one that never included a godly figure. He says he’d lived with the script since its earliest stages and knew exactly what it was meant to be, which is why he ultimately walked away.
Pankaj Tripathi went on to play the father in the finished film, while Akshay Kumar appeared as “Shiv ka Doot”.
Paresh Rawal says his biggest disappointment isn’t that the film changed, it’s that his name was left out entirely, with no acknowledgment for the original story or concept anywhere in the film.
He claims several major industry names, including Amit, Akshay, Ashwin, Ajay Devgn, Karan Johar and Salman Khan are all aware that the idea and story originated with him. He believes Ajay and Salman may have passed on the project simply because they saw it as a potentially controversial subject, despite his attempts to explain the concept to them.
OMG 2 released in 2023 and faced heavy scrutiny from the CBFC over its mix of s*x education and religious imagery. It was eventually cleared with an A certificate after several changes, including reworking Akshay Kumar’s character into a divine messenger rather than Lord Shiva himself. Despite the censor battle, the film went on to earn more than Rs 221 crore worldwide.
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