Excel Entertainment’s Ritesh Sidhwani has said work on the script for the third instalment of Don, featuring Shah Rukh Khan, has started. Don 2 completed six years on December 23 and Sidhwani said the next in the franchise will happen soon. “It will happen sooner than you know as we have started working on the script and the story. I think we need to crack the story as the responsibility is more (to get it right for the third part). With the next film in the Don franchise we won’t take that much time, we will make it fast,” he told PTI. An official announcement is likely next year. Speculations are rife, especially over Priyanka’s character Roma, and there are reports of Deepika Padukone replacing the Quantico star.

Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has lauded the trailer of Rani Mukherji’s upcoming Hichki and the actor believes that the film was an example that the new generation was eager to create something “different”. The 75-year-old actor tweeted to praise the effort by director Siddharth P. Malhotra and also shared the link of the recently released trailer.

Jacqueline Fernandez said she would be open to explore arenas beyond acting. “Acting is more like a passion for me. I love it but it doesn’t define me as a person. There are so many things I need to explore. I love branching out to do things which gives me happiness,” said Jacqueline, who co-owns the Delhi Heroes in the MTV Super Fight League — a mixed martial arts tournament.

Superstar Salman Khan will be working on his birthday (Wednesday) this year, as he’s started filming the next schedule of Race 3. “Salman will be shooting for a six-day long schedule for the film over the Christmas week. A pivotal action sequence is being shot in Mumbai, where Salman will be performing stylised action,” the film’s spokesperson said in a statement. Salman is shooting at Film City.

Aiyaary director Neeraj Pandey has accepted that among all his films so far, this does have some similarity with his first film A Wednesday, which has attained cult status now. “I think the film that is closest to A Wednesday in our whole 10-year-old journey is going to be Aiyaary. It speaks about the relevance of certain virtue that need to be present in our daily life and I think in that genre, these films are close,” he said. The other connection between the films is an under-construction site. “The last day of A Wednesday’s shoot with Naseer(uddin) bhai was at an under-construction site. The first day of the Aiyaary shoot happened to be at an under-construction site. It was little like picking up from where we had left.”

(Noyon Jyoti Parasara)

Bahubali star Prabhas has said Bollywood actress Shraddha Kapoor was extremely important to the upcoming Saaho and she has not been roped only for song and dance sequences. Prabhas called Shraddha the “best choice” for the role. “I have never worked with a Bollywood actor before and she is the best choice for the role. We are very lucky to have her on board… the character is very important and adds a lot of weight to the story,” Prabhas told PTI, adding he was impressed by the amount of hard work and dedication the actress is putting in.