Anurag Basu to direct 3 films back to back

By Subhash K. Jha -

November 12, 2010 - 12:00 AM IST

Anurag Basu to direct 3 films back to back

It was a near-calamitous Diwali for Anurag Basu. His little daughter suffered a finger injury, his wife fractured her leg and Anurag is under the weather
too.

Not a very happy Diwali for this super-gifted filmmaker, who friends claim, has gone underground.

To that Anurag laughs heartily, "Yes, I've been hearing rumours about myself. That I've migrated to Kolkata. That I'm making Bengali films. Ha ha! Just
because I did a celebrity chat show on Bangla TV. I suppose that's where the rumours started. I did that chat show because it was earlier hosted by Saurav
Ganguly."

Far from moving away from Hindi cinema after the debacle of Kites, Anurag is all set to direct three Hindi feature films in 2011.

Elaborates Anurag, "I was supposed to do two films Silence with Ranbir and Priyanka Chopra, and the film on Kishore Kumar in 2011. Silence
would've happened in 2010. It got pushed ahead because Imtiaz Ali's film Rock Star with Ranbir got delayed. Now between Silence and my Kishore Kumar
bio-pic, I am directing a third film. The details are now being worked out."

As for rumours of Anurag "returning" to television, the director of the neo-classics Gangster and Life... In A Metro says, "I started on
television. I never left the medium. We're now producing a serial loosely based Life... In A Metro. We've tentatively titled it Dil Khudgarz
Hai."

Anurag hoped to name the serial Metro. But the title belongs to UTV.

Anurag says it's impossible to make a sequel to Life... In A Metro." When we made the film, the concept and the treatment were novel. But now so many
films have been made on the same theme. Besides I've many new subjects for films. Why return to what I've already done."

Silence with Ranbir and Priyanka is to start shooting in January. The second leading lady is still to be finalized.

Anurag hopes to get the actress in place this month.