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The chase and the kill!

How times change. Karan Johar conceived Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, with Twinkle Khanna in mind. It remained in the mind, because Twinkle opted out. Karan then had a tough time convincing girls to take up the role.

All it took was a sooper-dooper hit at the BO. And today, heroines are clamouring for Karan, wanting to be part of his project. With special emphasis on 'part'.

Raveena Tandon (who had then signed up Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, over a special appearance in Karan's film), is now working on a guest role (for not more than five minutes) in Karan's next. So will Rani Mukherjee, who's role can be best described as walk-in, walk-out.

Repackaging is the order of the day. Lawrence D'Souza had produced a film called Sambandh starring Saif Ali Khan-Pooja Bhatt-Atul Agnihotri.

The film did not find any buyers and was gathering dust in the cans until brainwave struck. The film-maker recorded a fresh song got new publicity posters which, incidentally, have displayed Saif's face prominently, with Pooja's partly hidden and Atul's totally missing!

Voila. A new film. And Yeh Pyaar Hi To Hai is ready for marketing.

Talking about repackaging reminds me of filmmaker Rajeev Kumar. Now he had produced and completed a film with Rishi Kapoor and the Southern star Mohini.

But he didn't find a distributor for years to see the trial of the film let alone buy it.

Idea struck. He retained all the portions without Rishi Kapoor, added Govinda, Rambha and Johny Lever and reshot the other portions.

And that was how Beti No 1 was born.

Ajay Devgan is doing some serious rethinking as far as his career is concerned, now that Deewane has flopped.

Seems he called the film-makers of his the films he's now working on to his office. What then followed was a quick rerun with the script.

He then returned the signing amount of the films in which he felt he did not have the right role. The first casualty being Feroz Khan's Dil Tujhpe Qurban Meri Jaan. Obviously he must have realised that Fardeen's was the meatier role.

Though Khan camp might insist that it was Feroz Khan's idea to drop Ajay and concentrate on a solo Fardeen-Aishwarya Rai starrer!

When Shah Rukh Khan decided to produce Ashoka The Great, his partner and mentor Aziz Mirza was, very naturally, upset at not been given a second chance to make another film.

But as luck would have it, another offer fell into Shah Rukh's lap -- making software for the B4U channel. Shah Rukh jumped at it. For more reasons than one. Now, Aziz Mirza can make serials.

-- The Insider