Prince to join hands with Goutham Menon

In the week leading upto his birthday on August 9th, Mahesh Babu's fans have organised events such as pujas, distributing food to the poor and distributing fruits to poor hospital inmates. These activities have given rise to massive speculation that the chocolate-faced hero would be dabbling in politics, but Mahesh Babu has denied any interest in that arena.

With the question-mark of Mahesh Babu's political aspirations hanging in the air, superstar dad Krishna announced this week to the press that his prince, Mahesh Babu, has agreed to do three films. Mahesh-Trivikram Srinivas' flick (working title Varudu) will start shooting this month, Goutham Menon and Mahesh Babu will collaborate on another project at the end of 2008. The much talked-about project with Puri Jagannath (to be produced by Soundraya Rajnikanth, Ocher Studios and Warner Bros) has been pushed to next year, but confirmed dates were not revealed. As usual, the scripts for all three movies were vetted and approved by the head of the house before any formal deal was signed by the Telugu heart-throb.

The Goutham Menon flick will be a bilingual in Telugu and Tamil to be produced by UTV and Manjula.

Krishna was the very picture of the proud parent as he enthusiastically said Mahesh's reach throughout India was extremely good with the signing of these three mega projects, especially the one with the international production house.