Kareena Kapoor has finally agreed to replace Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in the lead role of Madhur Bhadarkar's Heroine, says a Mumbai Mirror report.
On Monday, UTV's CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur and the writer of Heroine Niranjan Iyengar flew down to Hyderabad to meet Kareena who had been spending some time with her boyfriend Saif Ali Khan, who in turn has been shooting for Cocktail with Deepika Padukone at the Ramoji Rao Film City there.
The meeting between the producer, the writer and the actress proved to be quite fruitful. So much so that the actress has now agreed to be a part of the project, with a few conditions of her own.
“Kareena has consented to the snorting, drinking and smoking scenes. Earlier, she had strong reservations against them. Now, she just doesn't want to do the explicit lovemaking scenes with Arjun Rampal and Sudhir Mishra's discovery Arunoday Singh. Those scenes are extremely sexy and Kareena is just not comfortable doing them,” informed a source.
And while UTV doesn't want to let go of this opportunity to revive their dream project with Kareena Kapoor, convincing the director Madhur to make changes in his script yet again, proves to be a challenge.
While Madhur Bhandarkar remained unavailable for comments, a source close to the film informed Mumbai Mirror, “Iyengar is very close to Kareena. He knew that this time he would be able to convince her. Both Kapur and Iyengar were very happy after the meeting. They were beaming. Madhur too was happy to learn that Kareena has agreed to do the film.”
Kareena, interestingly, happened to be Madhur's choice for the film previously. However, the actress had refused to do it since she felt that the content of the film was too heavy and bold for her. “What can be better than getting your first choice back in the project?” quipped the source when asked about the same.
Having found his silver lining in Hyderabad, UTV's head honcho Siddharth Roy Kapur stayed on in the city to multiply his happiness. This time with a different leading lady who also happens to be the lady leading his heart.
He extended his visit to be with his ladylove Vidya Balan who is shooting for Ekta Kapoor's Dirty Picture with co-star Emraan Hashmi and director Milan Luthria at the Ramoji Rao Film City in Hyderabad. So after a successful meeting, Kapur dropped by to meet Vidya on the sets of the film based on the life of Silk Smitha.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan had left the project after a week's shoot following her father in law's tweet about her pregnancy on June 21. According to industry insiders, it isn't commercially viable for the makers of the film to wait for more than a year for Ash to come back to the project.