Abhishek Bachchan has refuted the public perception that ‘Raavan' had any connection with famous epic Ramayana. Though there is widespread impression that the film was a modern day adaptation of the epic but Abhishek says that only connection with the epic was due to its name ‘Raavan', and even that was selected because it aptly described the various facets of Beera's personality in the film.
The film is slated for a worldwide release on June 18. Abhishek was the original choice for the character of Dev, who is Aishwarya Rai's husband in Mani Ratnam's upcoming flick ‘Raavan' in its Tamil version, but Abhishek refused to essay the character on the screen as he did not feel comfortable with the southern language, says a media report.
It was only after Abhishek Bachchan denied Mani Rathnam's offer of switching roles in the Tamil version that the director roped in southern actor Prithviraj to essay the character of Dev in the film.
As Aishwarya Rai was comfortable in the Tamil language, she accepted the offer of playing the character of Sita (Ragini) in both the versions of the flick. The buzz doing the rounds in the industry is that Mani Ratnam's original plan was to make the flick only in Hindi but as the film progressed he conceived of making it in both the languages and shooting it simultaneously with the same actors switching roles.
The most important switch over was to be of Vikram from playing Raavan in Tamil version to enacting Dev in Hindi version and Abhishek Bachchan doing the same for Hindi and Tamil versions. Initially, Abhi had even given his consent but soon found it too difficult to emote without knowing the language.
The honest and sincere Abhishek Bachchan made known his difficulties to director Mani Ratnam and this time managed to convince the master filmmaker to let him go. In fact, Abhishek was said to be too engrossed with the character of Beera to concentrate on anything else, and hence felt it wise to let the role be done by someone else who could do justice to that.
