Will Enthiran 2.0 be the most expensive Indian film ever made?

When Rajinikanth makes a film, it has to be larger than life.

His 2010 blockbuster Enthiran (Robot) was made with a massive budget of Rs 120 crores. No wonder then, it was the most expensive Indian film of the time.

Now, filmmaker Shankar returns withEnthiran 2.0 and a determination to break that record. Enthiran 2.0 has a whopping budget of Rs 350 crore. 

Lyca Productions, who will be financing this mammoth project, have confirmed this in an interview. The shooting is already underway and the film is expected to release in 2017. 

Despite all efforts, however, the producers have failed to rope in Hollywood actor-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the antagonist. 

Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar will take on Rajinikanth in the sequel. Rumors suggest that the actor will be paid Rs 25 crore for the film.

Academy award-winner A R Rahman will compose the music, while Amy Jackson will play the female lead.

Will Priyanka make a sexy Baywatch babe?

Priyanka Chopra is reportedly in talks to join Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron in a Baywatch movie, which could mark her Hollywood film debut.

The 33-year-old actress is already creating waves internationally with her maiden American television series Quantico, for which she even bagged a People's Choice Award.

Baywatch is Paramount's big screen take on the 1990s television series about California lifeguards. 

Seth Gordon will direct the feature, which is paddling toward a shoot with Alexandra Daddario and Kelly Rohrbach also suiting up, reported an entertainment portal.

The movie centres around the leader of an elite group of lifeguards (Johnson), who is forced to team up with a young, hotshot former Olympian (Efron) to save their beloved bay.

Scheduling conflicts with the film's shoot and Priyanka's Quantico still need to be worked out, but if signed, the actress would play the story's villain.

Salman Khan, The Gentleman

'Sooraji said the hugging scene had to look passionate because it was the first intimate scene in the film. I looked at Salman and burst into tears.'

It was a combination no one forgot -- an innocent Bhagyashree, a romantic Salman Khan and first time director with a dream.

Maine Pyar Kiya went on to become both a blockbuster and a film that will always be mentioned in Bollywood history.

It was the first time that Bhagyashree -- who was battling her family's resistance to her love for Himalaya in her personal life -- met Salman.

Salman was 24 years old and just beginning what would be a super-successful reign as an actor.

Bhagyashree, Salman Khan's romantic interest in his first hit film. Maine Pyar Kiya.

Salman and I first met at Sooraj Barjatya's office for a look test. Sooraji had told me they had selected a boy and wanted to see how both of us looked together onscreen.

We didn't have to say any dialogues. We just had to pose, walk, talk to and look at each other.

I found Salman very quiet, very sincere, very attentive. I guess it was because he always wanted to become an actor. Now that he had this opportunity, he wanted to prove himself and make it perfect. That's why he was so focused.

As we started shooting and got to know each other, the three of us (Salman, Sooraj Barjatya and Bhagyashree) really bonded well. We would have lots of fun together.

We were all new and raw so we would constantly help each other to do better.

There was a prominent photographer at that time -- I don't want to name him. He had come to do a publicity shoot and wanted some of those hot, sizzling pictures. We were shooting in a hotel; I think it was Holiday Inn or Sun N Sand (both in Juhu, Mumbai).

That photographer was telling Salman to kiss me without my knowledge and how to hold me during the shoot and stuff. Both of them couldn't see me and didn't know I was listening.

Salman asked the photographer, 'Have you asked her?'  He replied, 'No. What is the need of asking her? You do it; after all, it is just one shot.'

Salman said, 'I am not going to do anything like that. You take her permission; if she says it is okay, only then will I do it.'

I thought it was really nice and extremely chivalrous of him. It was very gracious and gentlemanly because the photographer just takes one photo but that one moment is caught on camera and you may not want it.

Salman did not say all that before me; he didn't even know I was there.

We were in Ooty shooting for Dil deewana bin sajna ke mane na when Salman came to know about my relationship with Himalayaji. He began teasing me in the morning itself. He would come very close to me and sing in my ear, 'Dil deewana bin sajna ke...'

I started wondering what had happened to this guy; he had never behaved so strangely before. Now, there were people on the sets and he was trying to flirt with me.

He harassed me throughout the day. In the evening, I told him the members of the press were on the sets and there were so many outsiders so why was he behaving like that and he said, 'I know.'

I asked him, 'What do you know?'

He said, 'Why don't you call him here?'

I asked, 'Call who here?'

That when I came to know that, through a common friend, he had come to know I was seeing Himalayaji. He was singing the song because he knew I was missing him. He asked me to call Himalayaji to Ooty.

We had a great friendship and shared great camaraderie.

There was a scene in the film after the song Kabootar ja ja when Salman comes home and I hug him. I had always thought that the only person I would hug was the one I am in love with. In fact, all my firsts have been after marriage. Earlier, I had never been to a disco or a dandiyanight. My New Year celebrations would end at 12.30 am.

Sooraji said the hugging scene had to look passionate because it was the first intimate scene in the film. I looked at Salman and burst into tears.

Salman asked me what happened and I told him I had never hugged a man before. He consoled me saying it was not real; that we were just acting. I was 18 then and very embarrassed that I was actually going to physically hug someone.

After my marriage to Himalayaji, (Bhagyashree  started shooting for Maine Pyar Kiya when she was 18. By the time she turned 19, she was already married. The post production of the film took nine months. She was 20 years old when the film released) there was another week of the shoot remaining.

Salman came to me and said, 'Bhagyashee, are you happy? Is everything alright? Can I do something to make it better?' He even asked if he should talk to Himalayaji since my family were against the marriage.

'What will you say,' I asked him. 'I will tell Himalaya that you better look after her otherwise you will have to deal with me,' he said.

'What makes you think you can do that,' he asked. He told me, 'Beti ki family hamesha aise jaakar bolti hain na (Doesn't the daughter's family always say this)?'

I told him, 'If you say this, another problem will start.'

I remember Salman as a very family-oriented person. He cares a lot about his parents. He really loves children. It really surprises me that he hasn't gotten married yet; anyone who loves children so much would want some of their own.

I have heard so many things about Salman since then… there have been a lot of ups and downs in his life. I think may be success affected him for some time in between -- it went to his head and he moved away from what he was really.

I think some of the incidents in his past have suddenly grounded him and he is doing lot of charity work now.

I think Salman's Prem from Maine Pyar Kiya is the best.

There were rumours that Salman would launch my son Abhimanyu, but that is not true. A journalist asked me if I would like my son to be launched by Salman. I said yes -- who wouldn't? -- but that doesn't mean Salman is going to launch my son.

Review: Star Wars Episode VII is a rollicking cover version

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens 'can be likened, in essence, to a new Salman Khan actioner where the core audience goes in with a checklist knowing they'll get some cheeky dialogue, some trite punchlines, an item song and one eventually shirtless fight scene,' says Raja Sen.

If you placed a lightsaber in the hands of director JJ Abrams, it would glow blue.

His new Star Wars film is a fine spacecraft, a blockbuster that knows its place. The hunt in this Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens might ostensibly be for the vanished Luke Skywalker, but -- be not fooled -- the flight plans for this gigantic motion picture only ever point to one destination: Nostalgia.

This is the grandest and most unashamed throwback of them all, a Star Wars film that triggers love for the original Star Wars trilogy by, well, belting out a cover version of the George Lucas classic.

The band fronted by Abrams is, thankfully, a talented cover band and they do an entertaining enough job hitting familiar notes in order to take the song to new generations -- but the song remains the same.

So much the same, in fact that one of this film's most unlikely -- if questionable -- assets is its utter predictability. I'm not a Star Wars person, and saw the original 1977 film four days ago after at least two decades, and it was fun, certainly, but because Star Wars is itself such a pastiche of influences and, more importantly, has itself been so influential, the plot machinations constantly appeared obvious and cliched.

Watching the new film which essentially recycles the trilogy's greatest hits, I was alarmed by how accurately I could tell each twist coming, even the big whoa moment we mustn't talk about. This is disappointing because, while a rollicking ride, I'm not thunderstruck by Episode VII as much as I am comforted.

It is blatantly transparent filmmaking, and can be likened, in essence, to a new Salman Khan actioner where the core audience goes in with a checklist knowing they'll get some cheeky dialogue, some trite punchlines, an item song and one eventually shirtless fight scene.

This is a film made to pleasure the fans and give them everything they wanted from the franchise. And it works. There is such universal love for the new Star Wars because it is, in too many ways, the old Star Wars.

Thus we have again a little android with a map everyone wants, a villain in a menacing mask and a baritone, a young protagonist (of curious parentage) who will be this generation's greatest Jedi, people squashed in a trash compactor, ships stolen, gigantic father-son issues and, of course, people having 'a bad feeling' about what is to come. Even the headquarters of all evil is, simply, a super-sized DeathStar.

This constant celebration and regurgitation would wear itself thin were Abrams not also a highly efficient filmmaker who put together a great cast: There's something rather special about watching this, the biggest of movies, kick off with a slugfest between Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver, two smashing talents last seen together singing a song (funnily enough, about 'Outer Space') in the best of movies, Inside Llewyn Davis.

And, it must be confessed, it's even cooler to watch 73-year-old Harrison Ford, silver-haired but with smirk intact, playing the roguish Han Solo as swashbucklingly as ever.

Abrams, in putting together characters new and old, gets the balance of his remix just right -- and that's harder than it sounds. (Just ask Bryan Singer, who tried to do a Richard Donner with his Superman Returns.)

He also very successfully folds in some diversity. We have Finn, a young black stormtrooper who doesn't like stormtrooping, played by the very likeable John Boyega, but -- most notably -- this generation's Luke Skywalker is a girl.

Daisy Ridley, a striking English actress who looks like Keira Knightley and speaks like Pierce Brosnan used to back when he was a television detective, is refreshingly unfamiliar and the film is poised on solid shoulders, even though this chosen-one character, Rey, appears a bit one-dimensional and depressingly free of flaws.

Still, this is the first blockbuster series to give a female character the reins, and for that -- in this lopsided world full of cinematic universes -- we should be glad. (The bestselling action figure, however, will undoubtedly be that of the doubly spherical new droid, the insanely cute BB8, and my favourite visual from this film will always be BB8 tentatively but determinedly negotiating a flight of stairs.)

Even to a non Star Wars devotee, however, I must confess the film hits hard. Those scrolling opening credits, set to that John Williams score, does strike right between the ribcage of all us once-children, and it's great to see Williams still masterfully making the film soar. Even if all we're watching is A New New Hope, the franchise indeed awakens. Even if it weighs in a half hour too long.

One only hopes that now, with old tropes having been applauded and new characters coming into play, the unending Star Wars films of the future will do their own thing instead of trying to sound like Uncle George, who has -- thanks to Disney -- no say in any of it.

It's a bunch of brave new whippersnappers at the helm now who need to subvert convention, defy expectation and, like Han Solo, may cockiness be with them. For while Episode VII is definitely a step toward the right side, it sure does feel... forced.