‘Excel’lent planning
Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar’s production house (Excel) has three big projects running concurrently. Zoya Akhtar, Rahul Dholakia and Dev Benegal are helming these films. However, Excel has some other major projects to announce as well, for 2014, although work on these may not start for a while.
Our source says, “Their three current films are all in pre-production. Excel usually works on only one film at a time, but they’ve had to break with tradition and work simultaneously on all three.”
Accordingly, Ritesh has decided to space out the work as much as he can for his teams. “One whole floor (of their office) has been assigned to Zoya Akhtar’s and Rahul Dholakia’s films. Auditions for both these films are on. For Dev Bengal’s film, the cats has been announced, with Farhan and Kareena in the lead roles. The pre-production for these films is happening on different floors,” our source says.