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Bachchan for baddie!

Sheela Bhatt

Kaun Banega Khalnayak:

a) Amrish Puri
b) Paresh Rawal
c) Gulshan Grover
d) Amitabh Bachchan?

Well, certainly not Amitabh Bachchan, you would think.

You would think wrong.

The Big B has a surprise up his long sleeve for you. The superstar has apparently agreed to play the villain in the Vipul Shah-directed Ankhmicholi.

Vipul Shah, for whom this is a directorial debut in Hindi cinema, is thrilled to bits at having lured Amitabh Bachchan to agree to work with him.

Vipul told rediff.com, "I had invited Bachchan to the preview of Dariya Choru, my Gujarati feature film. He told me that it was the best regional film he had ever seen. Film producer and financier Vinod Doshi had also seen the rushes of the film and he signed me on as the director for his new venture."

"I want to be different. My story is my trump card. In India, no one has ever made anything like Ankhmicholi. It's a 'fantasy-thriller'. When I earlier tried to contact Bachchan, he was busy with KBC. He is committed to the show, totally involved. He didn't return my call. But, I'd decided that only Bachchan could play this role. Finally, we went to see him at Filmalaya. I requested him to spare some time.

"He then asked me to narrate the story. I did, and he got interested. He wanted to read the script, so we met him five days later with it," says Shah.

The plot and the script are co-written by Vipul Shah and Aatish Kapadia, who is writing Yaadein for Subhash Ghai.

"After four hours of hearing about and reading the script, Amitabh agreed to play the villain. He has done it all in his career. There's nothing he hasn't done. I think he wants to explore and experiment now. Probably, he also wants to work with a new generation of film makers," says Shah.

"Akshay Kumar, Aftab Shivdasani and Paresh Rawal play the protagonists. Rani Mukherjee has a role where she shields the villain. Aftab was ready to drop a major role for this film and Akshay Kumar agreed to do it at the first meeting we had. An excited Paresh Rawal said, 'I don't want to discuss money'," informs Shah.

Shah says that he owes the positive response he received from Bachchan and the others to the unusual plot and a strong script.

The Big B enacts a highly-charged role of an intelligent antagonist. Shah says that Bachchan has no justification for his crime, neither is he a victim of any social injustice or attack on his family. He plays a bank officer who is sacked for misappropriation.

Amitabh had played a negative role in Parwana almost three decades ago. He returns as villain in Ankhmicholi.

Vipul Shah has earned kudos for his two hit serials on Sony: Alpaviram, based on a real life story, depicts a woman who is raped while she is in coma. Her pregnancy sets off a chain of events portrayed in the serial. And Ek Mahal Ho Sapno Ka captures all the shades of human emotion and family intrigue. The show is now over 500 weeks old.