Director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s slice-of-life comedy and family drama with Alia Bhatt that was supposed to go on the floors in late 2019, is not likely to happen. At least, not with Alia. PeepingMoon.com has information that the actress has reportedly decided not to do the project that is believed to be a Phantom Films production.
It is not known why Alia has supposedly backed out. And whether the trouble Phantom Films recently went through when one of its partners, Vikas Bahl, was accused of sexual molestation by a former employee in the #MeToo movement had anything to do with it. Bahl is fighting two other Phantom Films partners, Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, against whom he filed Rs 10 crore defamation case for attacking him on social media.
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Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari and Alia Bhatt[/caption]
Ashwiny, who made her directorial debut in 2016 with Nil Battey Sannata and then directed Bareilly Ki Barfi in 2017, had expressed eagerness and excitement to work with Alia when she announced their film in June. She had said, “I am very happy and filled with gratitude with the story that I’ll be doing with Alia. Without a doubt, Alia will light up the screen with her acting prowess.” This would have been Alia’s fourth film with a female director after Dear Zindagi by Gauri Shinde, Raazi by Meghna Gulzar and Gully Boyz by Zoya Akhtar. She began as a child artiste with Tanuja Chandra in Sangharsh.
The actress, who is currently working on Ayan Mukerji’s fantasydrama Brahmastra opposite Ranbir Kapoor, was to play a singer in Ashwiny’s film which would capture her journey and all that she goes through to achieve her dreams of making it big. Alia had thought it was an “extremely fun concept” and a “breakaway film” and she was equally keen to work with Ashwiny. The film was penned by Dangal writer-director and Ashwiny’s husband, Nitesh Tiwari, along with the co-writer of the Aamir Khan blockbuster, Nikhil Mehrotra.
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