Sonali Joshi Pitale (MID-DAY; February 10, 2014)

When Rajat Kapoor began working on his film, Ankhon Dekhi, the actor-director was keen to have Amitabh Bachchan play one of the main roles in his film. However, this dream of his remains unfulfilled as the filmmaker failed to get backing from the big studios. “Rajat, who has written the script, approached several studios to back his film, but his efforts went in vain. Initially, he wanted to cast cast Amitabh Bachchan in the film as he felt that Big B would be a good fit. The film’s story is his labour of love where he has drawn parallels from his real life. However, no studio support meant limited finances and casting Big B was not possible anymore.” Interestingly, just when he was about to put the script on the backburner — he even ranted about it on a social media site — he found support from an unlikely source: a fan based out of Dubai. The source says, “Manish Mundra is a businessman who follows Rajat’s films closely and even though he has limited understanding of filmmaking he believes in Rajat’s project.” The film’s spokesperson confirmed the story. “Yes, it’s true that Rajat approached various studios with his script to no avail. But now he has his producer on a social networking site,” says the spokesperson.