Big B’s love story pushed to end of 2013

By Subhash K. Jha -

January 4, 2013 - 11:04 AM IST

Big B’s love story pushed to end of 2013

That R. Balki is planning his third project with the Big B after the path-breaking Cheeni Kum and Paa, is a well-known fact. The problem facing the filmmaker and the superstar was what kind of a film to undertake that would prove to be as innovative in the Big B's distinguished career as the two films he has done with Balki so far?

After several brainstorming sessions it was decided that an intense love story is what the Big B needed at this juncture of his career.

Says a source, "Both Balki and the Big B felt the Big B had not done an intense love story for quite a while. The last truly profound romantic film done by the Big B was Yash Chopra's Silsila. And that was way back in 1981. Balki began scripting a love story about an aging couple and hoped to cast Sridevi opposite the Big B."

But then along came Sudhir Mishra's Mehrunissa, another very intense love story to feature the Big B about a romance that sweeps across 5 decades.

Mehrunissa starts this year. It has compelled some serious re-thinking for the Balki project with the Big B.

Says the source, "That space for love and romance in the Big B's career which was vacant since Silsila was suddenly taken up by Mehrunissa. Balki who wants his third film with the Big B to occupy as unique a space as Cheeni Kam and Paa has gone back to the storyboard to do an entire re-write of the love story."

Balki's Big B project would now take off in the last months of 2013.

Confirming this, Balki says, "It will take that much time for me to do my script. Writing a film on which so much expectation rides after Cheeni Kum and Paa is not easy. Amitji and I have to do something that hasn't been done before. So yes, my project with Amitji won't start before the end of 2013."