Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 24, 2017)

Mirror (April 21) was the first to report that after Shoojit Sircar’s Piku, Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan will reunite for Vishal Bhardwaj’s yet-untitled production. To be directed by Honey Trehan, who has assisted the 52-year-old filmmaker on Omkara, Kaminey and 7 Khoon Maaf, the film will have Deepika as mafia queen Rahima Khan (popularly known as Sapna Didi), while Irrfan portrays a local gangster in love with her and aids her in her mission to eliminate Dawood Ibrahim.

The foursome resurrected the chatter around their film late on Tuesday, assembling at a suburban five-star with co-producer Prernaa Arora in tow, for a brainstorming session. “The team had been meaning to meet for a while now. Since Deepika wasn’t shooting for Padmavati and Irrfan is in town, they decided to gather on Tuesday to discuss the script, how their characters would shape up and their looks,” a source close to the development informed Mirror, adding that prep has already begun with Vishal currently working on the music while his team is on a recce, scouting for locations across India.

Deepika, who will be learning how to wield a gun, will start her homework after wrapping up work on Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmavati. Irrfan is poised to start work on Ronnie Screwvala’s next, a light-hearted comedy, in Kerala with Malayalam actor Dulquer Salmaan and Mithila Palkar. He too will start training after he wraps that up as he is performing his own stunts. Shooting kicks off from January-end in Mumbai.

The film is based on one of the chapters from investigative journalist-turned-author S Hussain Zaidi’s book, Mafia Queens of Mumbai, for which Vishal had also written a foreword. Sapna Didi had planned Dawood’s execution during a cricket match in Sharjah to avenge her husband Mehmood Kaliya’s death. Unfortunately for her, he got wind of her plan and killed her days before she could get to him.

Co-incidentally, Deepika’s actor-beau Ranveer Singh was in the hotel around the same time. So was filmmaker Kabir Khan, fuelling speculations online that they had met to discuss their cricket-based film on India’s 1983 World Cup victory in which Ranveer plays Kapil Dev, the then captain of the Indian XI. However, a source close to the director insists that Ranveer and he were not there to brainstorm on the film. Kabir had dropped by for an event and bumped into Ranveer, Deepika, Vishal and also filmmaker Madhu Mantena, who is producing the cricket-based film and also happened to be there.