Actor-filmmaker Madhavan and writer Chetan Bhagat exchange barbs on social media

All it took was one seemingly incendiary but essentially harmless tweet from Netflix to stir a social media interaction that left a lot of unassuming netizens surprised. The tweet just said, "Let's settle this. Books > Movies or Movies > Books." 

While it was expected that Chetan Bhagat, a best-selling author, and a social media butterfly, would share his two cents about this, what wasn't expected was actor-filmmaker Madhavan joining the conversation. If Chetan wrote, "My books. And the movies based on them", Madhavan was quick to bait the author by saying, "Hey Chetan... My bias is movies>books."

This resulted in a series of hilarious exchanges between the actor, who was part of 3 Idiots, one of India's biggest bonafide blockbusters, which was incidentally based on Chetan's debut novel, Five point someone. 

While Madhavan reminded Chetan that people found 3 Idiots better than the book, the latter hit back saying he prefers a Pulitzer to a Pan Masala branded award show. Although, these exchanges were hilarious in their own merit, the icing on the pan masala cake was the final set of barbs that began with Chetan saying, "I prefer to be Chetan Bhagat rather than Farhan from that one movie."

For people who are in the know that Chetan is a recurring star in Madhavan's recent Netflix release, Decoupled, this exchange would have screamed 'publicity drill' at them. For those in the dark about this Manu Joseph-created series, it might have been quite an interesting evening to see Madhavan and Chetan slug it out on social media. 

Of course, both of them acknowledged that this was a publicity drill even as they finished the conversation heaping praises on each other with Madhavan saying, "Would say just like your books, you are also better on the big screen! Hahahahaha.. actually you were Brilliant bro..." 

Well... Aal izz well indeed.