A film offer worth 2 crore waiting in the mail!

He made jaws drop with his debut in a tailor made teenage drama last year (We, of course speak of a parallel universe where teenage guys have impeccably polished abs – How come we ended up growing up with all the gawky ones?) And now Varun Dhawan has leapt up a few rungs on the struggler’s ladder by bagging the lead role in Ekta Kapoor’s big budget remake of an undisclosed South Indian rom com. Looks like all the critics who pronounced Siddarth Malhotra as the winner at the newcomer face-off last year, may have chosen a tad early!

While South Indian remakes in Bollywood are as common as Poonam Pandey’s Twitter stripteases, Ekta had to wage a mighty war to buy the rights to this one. Word has it that, both Boney Kapoor and the badass Salman Khan had their sights set on buying the rights to the film. However, the instant Ekta watched the film, she decided that it had to be remade, K-style. In a scene that could have come straight out of one of her daily soaps, she marched in, tripled the offer and pocketed the rights, all in the span of one night. 

Confirming the rumours, a leading newspaper reported, “She wanted to the buy the rights immediately after she watched the film. Her team got in touch with the makers and offered them twice the sum they were quoting. However, when the deal was struck, her offer had tripled. She finalised the deal within one night.”

And when it came to casting a hero for what is probably, her most ambitious project to date, Ekta looked to close friend Karan Johar, who promptly nudged her in Varun’s direction. The shooting for the film will start mid – year, but Varun’s appointment diary is already full with a comedy for daddy Dhawan’s home banner and another venture with Karan Johar. Yes, it may have been a mere four months since he made his big debut, but this Student’s scorecard definitely rates an A!