After the overblown wedding earlier this year, the newlywed Bachchans seem to have settled into married life. Naturally, fans and colleagues are expecting Ash to trot down the traditional wifely path and announce her pregnancy any time soon.
Let’s set things straight. Since when has Ash done things conventionally? Abhishek has just confirmed to Mumbai Mirror that Aishwarya is NOT in fact pregnant. Rather, she is raring to go with a bunch of projects awaiting her consent. Recently, Ash completed shooting for Jodha Akbar with Ashutosh Gowariker and Hrithik Roshan. She was simultaneously shooting for Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar Raj (with husband and father-in-law) and dubbing for Jodha Akbar for the past couple weeks. Business manager Hari Singh confirms, “She has a very tight shooting schedule coming up. She has finished dubbing for Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Jodha Akbar. She is currently shooting for Ramgopal Varma’s Sarkar Raj which she wraps up on August 31 and then flies to Europe to shoot for her Hollywood film.”
Yes, you heard it right! Following the shooting of Sarkar Raj, Aishwarya will fly to Europe to shoot for Pink Panther 2, co-starring Steve Martin, Alfred Molina, John Cleese and Andy Garcia. Now that’s quite a star cast! This film is a sequel to the first part which starred Beyonce Knowles as the leading lady. Ash will shoot for this film until the end of the year. The film is slated for a release on February 19th, 2009.
Apparently, Ash will try to squeeze in Karan Johar’s next production directed by Tarun Mansukhani somewhere towards the end of the year. If not, the project will be filmed in early 2008. Also, she has Suniel Shetty’s next production titled Raaste (co-starring Abhishek, John and Sikandar) which should hit the floors in early 2008 as well. And the latest word has it that she has agreed in principal to star in Rohan Sippy’s production directed by Sriram Raghavan (Ek Hasina Thi) opposite John Abraham. However, she has yet to sign on the dotted line for this romance-adventure flick.
Her business manager Hari Singh adds (as told to Mumbai Mirror), “She already has 16 producers waiting to sign her. She has been listening to narrations and having story sittings. She also has an offer from south director Shankar for his Hindi film Robot that has Shah Rukh Khan in the lead. But we are still in talks with him.” Looks like those who hope to see Ash pair up with King Khan again post-Devdas might be in for a treat!
On a non-filmy front, Ash’s wax statue at Madam Tussauds Wax Museum in New York City is set to be unveiled soon. The statue will witness Ash clad in bridal apparel. She has yet to commit her attendance to the unveiling, but let’s hope it all works out. She’s also traveling with Abhishek to Toronto late next week to hold a press conference in regards to her world tour titled “Unforgettable” which is to be held in Spring of 2008. The tour is set to be an enormous project for which Ash will be accompanied by Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Bipasha Basu, Riteish Deshmukh and Lara Dutta. Should be one rocking affair!
With all this going on, I fail to understand how a kid comes into the picture at this stage of the game. Let’s hope the media thinks twice before concocting new baby rumours.
