Not many may be aware that Vidya Balan, before her Bollywood debut with Parineeta, was signed on to play the female lead in the Mohanlal starrer Chakram. Posting a picture with Mohanlal taken in 2000, Vidya wrote on her Instagram Stories, “TBT 2000... The pic was taken on the set of my first Malayalam film #Chakram with @mohanlal!!! The film got shelved after the first schedule... Not looking as bad as I imagined I did!!!”
The actor said in a recent media interaction that Chakram was shelved after the first schedule for unknown reasons. Parineeta, which shot her to fame, was released five years later. Vidya pointed out that soon after Chakram was shelved, she was labelled a jinxed actor and all offers, including a Tamil biggie, eluded her.
Vidya made her acting debut with the Bengali film Bhalo Theko, directed by Goutam Halder, in 2003. However, it was Parineeta in 2005 that earned her star status. The film fetched her the Filmfare Best Female Debut award.
Parineeta is a musical romantic drama film, adapted from the 1914 Bengali novel penned by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. Directed by debutant Pradeep Sarkar, its screenplay was penned by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, who also bankrolled it. The film starred Sanjay Dutt and Saif Ali Khan in the lead roles apart from Vidya. The star cast also included Raima Sen, Dia Mirza, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty and Surinder Kaur.
Vidya was last seen in the biographical comedy-drama Shakuntala Devi. It was scheduled for a theatrical release in May but with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown, the film was released on Amazon Prime Video on July 31.
Written and directed by Anu Menon, Shakuntala Devi was produced by Sony Pictures Networks India and Vikram Malhotra under the Abundantia Entertainment banner. The film had Vidya playing Shakuntala Devi, known popularly as the ‘human computer’. Jisshu Sengupta, Sanya Malhotra and Amit Sadh formed the rest of the cast. The film’s technical crew included Karan Kulkarni for the background music, Sachin-Jigar for the songs, Keiko Nakahara for cinematography and Antara Lahiri for editing.
Earlier this year, Vidya announced her new project Sherni. On signing the film, she said in a statement to Mumbai Mirror, “I loved Newton and when Amit [Masurkar] narrated Sherni to me, I knew I wanted to do this film. The uniqueness of the story and its world appealed to me.”
The shooting of Sherni began in Bhoot Palasi, a forest area in Madhya Pradesh’s Raisen district, on March 4. Reports say that the actor will play a forest officer in the film. Sherni is about the man-animal conflict and how the lead character combats it with the help of other officers and forest guards. The film is bankrolled jointly by Bhushan Kumar, Vikram Malhotra and Amit Masurkar.
Vidya, who has never done a remake till now, made an exception for the Ajith Kumar starrer Nerkonda Paarvai, the Tamil remake of Bollywood’s Pink. The award-winning actor made her debut in the Tamil film industry with this film.
(Content provided by Digital Native)