Director Rohit Shetty and producer Karan Johar have reportedly sealed Arjun Kapoor for their remake of Ram Lakhan. Arjun will play Lakhan, the role that belonged to Anil Kapoor in the 1989 original directed by Subhash Ghai.

Arjun — who on last season’s Koffee with Karan, hosted by KJo, had counted Ram Lakhan as one of his favourite films — has apparently already started taking tips from chachu Anil on how to go “1-2-ka-4, 4-2-ka-1” to play the tapori.

Karan and Rohit are still hunting for an actor to play Ram, who was brought to life by Jackie Shroff in the original. The heroines — played by Dimple Kapadia and Madhuri Dixit — have also not been finalised.

Ram Lakhan, co-produced by Ghai, goes on the floors next year and is set for a 2016 release.

love actually: That’s current heart-throb Fawad Khan with co-star Mahira Khan in the first look of his popular Pakistani television series Humsafar, that will air on Zindagi channel. The show— in which Fawad and Mahira play a couple trying to mend their troubled marriage — marks the third outing of the Khoobsurat man on Zindagi after his hit show Zindagi Gulzar Hai and the telefilm Behadd. Both Fawad and Mahira have won a number of awards for Humsafar, which, when it was telecast in Pakistan in 2011, was hailed as the “revival” of Pakistani television. Humsafar will air on Zindagi only towards the end of the year, but Fawad fans can catch him on the big screen on September 19, the Friday Khoobsurat hits theatres.

lol... not! Not everyone has been going gaga — or rather haha— at Alia Bhatt’s ‘Genius of the Year’ video in which the Highway actress sportingly makes fun of her alleged low IQ. A fair bit of criticism — “immature” to “dumb” — has been hurled at the 10-minute video that also ‘stars’ Karan Johar, Arjun Kapoor and Parineeti Chopra. Singer Sona Mohapatra — who recently lashed out at the makers of Khoobsurat for not acknowledging the Rajasthani source of the number Engine ki seeti — has trained her guns on Alia and Co., without naming names. “These young icons are looked up to by million tots, plied with endorsements & then ‘celebrate’ ‘dumbing down’? It angers me no end that this is the mediocrity that we are so enthusiastic to reward. Let’s all just giggle on?” was the rant on Twitter from the Ambarsariya singer. Chill, girl!

Varun the villain: Sidharth Malhotra scored big with Ek Villain, so now it’s the turn of SOTY rival Varun Dhawan to go villainous. Taking a break from romance and comedy, Varun will go dark in Ek Hasina Thi man Sriram Raghavan’s Badlapur, slated to hit screens in February 2015. Said to be “a twisted thriller”, Badlapur is a revenge saga in which Varun — who reportedly plays a negative character — will share screen space with the Gangs of Wasseypur pair of Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Huma Qureshi, with Yaami Gautam and Vinay Pathak co-starring. Bolly buffs will remember Badlapur as the film that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan nearly signed on as her comeback — till she chose to go with Jazbaa, Sanjay Gupta’s film with John Abraham and Irrfan Khan.