A spanking sleek printed press kit and browsable cd, plus a lovely desktop spirally bound Rang De Basanti calendar -- the media kit bespoke a well planned launch for UTV's film Rang De Basanti. In fact, the calendar even has the date 20 January 2006 marked for "release of the film". But that, alas, was not to be.

The first scare came with the so-called 'review-preview' by the air force brass, which however gave the film a thumbsup for release, and then, just when even we had reported that the film was ready for a Jan 20th launch came the news that it had fallen foul of animal rights activists led by Maneka Gandhi, who had insisted that the film take prior permission for the use of animals in the shooting, just to ensure that there was no cruelty to the animals. This permission -- or the lack of it -- could have set the film's release back by weeks at least, and we now learn that all is well, and that the film will release very soon.

A PRO from UTV confirms that Rang De Basanti is now slated for a Jan 26th, Republic Day release. To circumvent the permission problems, the producers have made a very small cut in the film -- "all of 20 seconds -- a very minor cut" is how the PRO described it.