Raavan highlights: Star couple in new Ramayana

Finally, Bollywood seems to be back on the track following the moderate success of Prince, Paathshaala, Housefull and Badmaash Company. A big disappointment came in the form of Kites but the stupendous success of Raajneeti came as a big relief. Now, all eyes are on Raavan, which features big names like Abhishek Bachchan, Vikram and Aishwarya Bachchan in the lead roles.

Raavan is said to be modern version of the Indian epic Ramayana. In the epic, Sita, wife of Rama, is abducted by Raavan, the demon king of Lanka. The news is doing the rounds that producer and director of the film Mani Ratnam has given a new twist to Ramayana for Raavan. It is a bilingual film to be simultaneously released in Tamil as Raavanan, and it has been dubbed into Telugu as Villain.

One of the highlights of the film is certainly the star couple Abhishek and Aishwarya. They have acted in a few films together but none turned into commercial hits. They are expected to rock the box office this time around. It is in fact Abhishek's ticket to stardom, and he plays negative role. It will be interesting to see how filmmaker Mani Ratnam portray the star couple. The cast and crew of the film went through lots of hardship, shooting in the dense forest of Kerala and Ooty.

Raavan faced its share of controversy. KFCC turned down the request from Raavan makers to allow them to release it in more theatres in Karnataka, on the ground that it is a bilingual film with a Tamil version. Now, the biggest threat may come from South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce, who threatened to ban films of actors and technicians who attend the recently concluded IIFA Awards held in Sri Lanka. The unit of the film stayed away from the film fest but Govinda's presence has cast doubt if SIFCC would ban the screening of the film in South India.

Raavan also features actors like Govinda, Ravi Kishan, Nikhil Dwivedi, Tejaswini Kolhapure and Priyamani vital roles. It has music composed by Academy Award winner A.R. Rahman and would be screened in 2200 theatres worldwide.

Watch out guys!