It started as a joke. And that's how it should have remained.

Is Salman Khan the unbilled mystery man in Ken Ghosh's Fida?

The answer is an emphatic no!

Salman doesn't figure in the cast of the Kareena Kapoor-Shahid Kapoor-Fardeen Khan thriller at all.

Fida: Kareena's first negative role

So what prompted a news channel to carry a breathless story on Salman's 'surprise appearance' in Fida?

Apparently Salman told journalists last week that he looked younger than Shahid. This off-the-cuff remark was misconstrued as an admission that he was the bandh mutthi, the secret ace up director Ken Ghosh's sleeve.

According to inside sources, "Salman is hundred percent NOT in Fida. (Producers) Tips isn't killing the misleading rumour because it suits them fine for people to presume that the saleable Salman is part of the cast. But the studied silence could backfire on the film if audiences go expecting Salman to pop up in the plot."

Lots of red herrings are being strewn as the release date of Fida approaches.

One prominent newspaper in Delhi wrote that Fida is based on the Jim Carrey starrer The Truman Show (this, probably because of the catchline about someone else having written Kareena and Shahid's love story in the film).

Another publication jumped to the conclusion that Fida is based on the Sharon Stone starrer Sliver (probably because Fardeen is seen in front of a video monitor).

But Lalit Mahajan, who has written the thriller (he has also written this week's release Abbas-Mustan's Taarzan The Wonder Car), denies that Fida is inspired by any source.

Interestingly, Fida was supposed to have been directed by Abbas-Mustan with Sanjay Dutt, Bobby Deol and Amisha Patel in the lead.

Says Ken Ghosh, "People's expectations and all this speculation is scaring me. People went to my first film Ishq Vishq with no expectations. I hope they don't go to Fida with too many expectations."

Image: Uday Kuckian