Sonil Dedhia (MID-DAY; February 20, 2018)

Karan Johar may be miles away in Germany, but he created ripples in Bollywood yesterday as he announced his next with Varun Dhawan, Rannbhoomi. Dhawan is said to play a warrior in the Shashank Khaitan-directed project. Interestingly, sources in the know reveal that Rannbhoomi is a re-imagined version of Shhuddhi, Johar's pet project that unfortunately never took off.

For the uninitiated, the filmmaker had announced Shuddhi with Hrithik Roshan and Kareena Kapoor Khan in 2013. After Roshan bowed out of the project, Salman Khan had stepped in for a while before exiting the magnum opus. The project was in limbo until Johar found his new leads in Dhawan and Alia Bhatt in 2015. However, the film did not make headway in the years to follow.

A source reveals, "Karan was always attached to Shhuddhi and felt it would bowl the audience over if it were to be made. While Karan Malhotra was supposed to helm it in 2013, Karan now entrusted the job to Shashank. The director has reworked the script to suit a younger actor like Varun. The budget too has been resized."

As Johar felt ready to revisit the film, one of the first things he told his team was that the drama be rechristened. "Since he could not roll Shhuddhi in the past four years, Karan felt that it was a bad omen. So he was sure that this project would not share the same title," adds the insider.