Bollywood news

Signs co-production venture with Red Carpet Films - a Mukta Arts Company London Wednesday 21st November 2007: Eros International, the London AIM listed leading integrated company within the Indian media & entertainment sector, has entered into a joint venture with Manish Goswami's Red Carpet Films, a Mukta Arts company in to co-produce three to four films a year under this banner.

After putting on weight to play a 60-year-old in Ketan Mehta's "Rang Rasiya", Randeep Hooda is back in the gym to get in shape to play the same character at 20 - in just 10 days! "I've let my body become a bit flabby and paunchy to play the older section between the age of 60 and 70 of my character Raja Ravi Varma in Ketan Mehta's "Rang Rasiya". Now I've to immediately to go down to playing the character aged 20," Hooda said.

It's arguably one of the most incongruous creative pairings in the history of Indian cinema. Producer Sanjay Gupta has convinced poet par-excellence Gulzar to lend words, images and thoughts to the 10 stories that comprise Gupta's short-story bouquet of "Dus Kahaniyan"

Writer-director Manish Acharya has recently shifted base from the US to Mumbai and feels far more at home here - except when strangers walk up to him and wonder why he has misspelled the leonine word in the title of his first movie "Loins of Punjab Presents".

Purists who were appalled by the idea of Paro and Chandramukhi coming together in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Devdas" are in for a further jolt in Sudhir's Mishra's new version of the classic.

Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan, who is the new brand ambassador of Flying Machine jeans and all set to shoot for its ad films, says it is anything but easy to work in ad films. "I think it's far tougher doing an ad. Within two minutes one has to say what one gets to say in nearly three hours in movies. So, yes, I enjoy doing ads," he said.

Everyone who's someone in filmdom is buying a home in the wind-swept seclusion of Khandala away from the bustle of Mumbai. "It's a great getaway spot," said Sanjay Gupta who bought himself a place in the Maharashtra hill station seven years ago.

Apoorva Lakhia's new film "Mission Istanbul" will have many costly stunt sequences and he has roped in "The Departed"-fame action director George Aguilar to do the action sequences in his film.

Subhash Ghai, who has recently sold the rights for his "Karz" to T Series for a remake, refuses to predict the fate of Himesh Reshammiya's version of his musical thriller but at the same time he praises the singer-composer-actor saying he is today's Laxmikant-Pyarelal.

Just a day before the premiere of his directorial debut, New York-based Indian filmmaker Manish Acharya was in for a huge shock when the sound parameters of his "Loins of Punjab Presents" started showing problems. He learned about the fault while he was on his way to his leading lady Shabana Azmi's house to wish her on her birthday.