Bipasha Basu to play Mandodari in Mani Ratnam’s Raavan

The principal casting of Mani Ratnam’s Raavan is almost complete with Bipasha Basu roped in to play Mandodari, Raavan’s (Abhishek Bachchan) wife.

Photo: Bipasha Basu to play urban Mandodari in Raavan

Bipasha will start shooting end-September 2009.

She is likely to do an item number as well (no surprises there) in the movie. In case you are wondering what an item number is doing in a mythological film, Raavan is a modern-day adaptation of the epic Ramayana, from Raavan’s point of view.

Raavan will loosely draw from the epic, pretty much like what Mani Ratnam did with the Rajnikanth-Mamootty starrer, Dalapathi, which was based on the Mahabharata.

The movie should be interesting if Mani Ratnam can pull it off, for Raavan is a very intriguing character, a man of many contradictions.

He was extremely learned and accomplished, yet arrogant to the point of being a violent tyrant.

Raavan stars Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who plays the modern-day version of Sita to South Indian actor Vikram’s urban Rama.

The movie also stars Manisha Koirala, Govinda, Ravi Kishan, Tejaswini Kolhapure, and Ajay Gehi.

Govinda will essay the role of Hanuman – in the movie he will be a forest officer who guides Ram in his search for his wife – while Ravi Kishan and Ajay Gehi will play the role of Kumbhakarna and Vibhishana, Raavan’s brothers.

Raavan will be released sometime in 2010.

The movie is being shot as Raavan in Hindi and Ashokavanam in Tamil, at the same time.

Some reports say that that the role of Mandodari was offered to Sushmita Sen and Shilpa Shetty initially, which both of them declined.

Raavan is scripted by Mani Ratnam and Rensil D’Silva and directed by Mani Ratnam. The music of the movie will be composed by AR Rahman.