CELEBS FACTORY

The Bhatts want Prachi Desai to shed her inhibitions in their film Informer with Emraan Hashmi.

They have told her to go bare-dare and get the sexy tag, as they have done with their earlier heroines, Mallika Sherawat, Kangna Ranuat and Jacqueline Fernandes.

Let's see how far Prachi will go with the skin fest; considering that her close bond with mentor Ekta Kapoor has gone kaput, the girl might as well go for a major image makeover.

Mallika Sherawat was recently approached to host India's Sexiest Bachelors on a newly launched channel. The actress after an initial hearing asked for an astronomical fee.

However whatever the channel offered, the sexy siren would demand double of it. After a few rounds of negotiations, the channel decided that they were better off without her.

Says a source, "As the channel was launched in May, they are looking at grabbing eyeballs. The show would feature hot hunks, so they felt the sexy siren was the best bet to anchor the show."

Adds the source, "The show was for 10 episodes and among the names that are slated to feature include Sidhartha Mallya, John Abraham, Yuvraj Singh and Ranbir Kapoor.

Initially, Mallika showed interest but when the monetary talk began she was like a diva who refused to budge." In the past, Mallika had judged a few episodes of the dance show Chak Dhoom Dhoom on another channel. She was booted out due to her starry tantrums. The actress had turned up hours late at the launch of the show itself.

Later during the shoot, she had her list of demands that included not getting proper breaks during the shoot. An exasperated channel then replaced her with Urmila Matondkar. India's Sexiest Bachelors has now roped in Shibani Dandekar to host the show. Mallika, who is presently in New York, remained unavailable for comment.

Mallika Sherawat’s much-talked-about bikini act in Double Dhamaal came as a bit of a damp squib after the stills from the shoot showed the oomph queen amply covered in a bikini top and a sarong.

Now, to further flush down the excitement, the film’s director Indra Kumar and producer Ashok Thakeria have decided to scissor out Mallika’s bikini sequence from the final print. Reason? They don’t want the family audiences to be put off by an overt display of Mallika’s sexuality.

Initially, the makers planned to keep an elaborate sequence that showed Mallika Sherawat stepping into a pool and splashing and laving in the water.

According to the makers, full-blown bikini sequence featuring Mallika would have given the impression that Double Dhamaal is a sex comedy. So they have axed out a substantial part of the scene and just retained a few shots that have a blink-and-miss bikini cameo by Mallika.

Obviously, the sex bomb isn’t happy over the editing out of her bikini scene.

There's tremendous buzz around Vishesh Films' Murder 2 starring Emraan Hashmi and Jacqueline Fernandez for obvious reasons.

The trade and the public who have now come to expect a staple erotic quotient from the Bhatt brothers (Mukesh and Mahesh) — Jism and Murder being the reference points — know that Murder 2 won't just push the envelope but tear it.

Mahesh Bhatt, the brain behind these films, admits that Jacqueline is bolder than Jism's Bipasha Basu and Murder's Mallika Sherawat (Murder). Says he, "We at Vishesh Films decided to make films with a high quotient of erotica to cater to the new consumer who is living a life radically different from the life I lived in my youth. "Bollywood cinema was slow to realise this but society had moved on. That is why when we made Jism and Murder and Raaz, the audience lapped it up. They had no problems with it. But the purists were outraged.

"For the first time in Indian cinema, Bipasha uttered the words, "the body doesn't know love, it only knows lust." Then we had Mallika in Murder who sleeps with another man and returns to her marriage only because her affair isn't working out. She has an intensely fulfilling sexual extra-marital relationship and feels no guilt. This is the post modern Indian woman.
"The India in which we were groomed, was shackled to certain beliefs. In the cinema made by our predecessors — Raj Kapoor and Raj Khosla — we were invariably shown that good people fell in love while bad people had sex.

"For me, the eye-opener came when I saw Jism in Delhi and found 70 per cent of the audience comprised of rich women. It was not just being viewed by sex-hungry frontbenchers but also by an evolved upmarket audience. "Raaz was simply the precursor. With Murder 2, women have gone one step further. Jacqueline is a different animal from Mallika and Bipasha. While they sinned with their eyes open but still yearned to conform towards the end; for Murder 2's Jackie, sex is even more casual. For her sex is like an expression. She does it as casually as she would inhale or exhale. That is what it is." The film releases worldwide on July 8.

If Mallika Sherawat wasn’t hot enough for the promotion of the upcoming comedy film Double Dhamaal, there are steamy hot jalebis too to woo the crowds.

We hear that Mallika Sherawat will be distributing the mouth-watering jalebis to her fans during the coming weekend to mark the launch of her item song “Jalebi Bai” in Double Dhamaal, starring Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Ritesh Deshkukh and Aashish Chaudhary. Mallika is the film’s leading lady.

The marketing and creative team of Double Dhamaal has come up with this unique promotional idea. The inspiration, however, came from the film’s sets.

During the shoot of the song, director Indra Kumar would order about 25 kgs of jalebis for the crew. Everyone, including the diet conscious Mallika Sherawat, used to have a bite.

Now, during the coming weekend, Mallika herself would promote “Jalebi Bai’ by giving away the boxes of jalebi to her fans at a sweet mart in suburban Mumbai.

Guess the fans would be left licking their fingers.

Mallika Sherawat may not be known for her ability to make friends easily but she makes exceptions once in a while. A source close to the actress says that when Madame M was in Cannes for the international film festival, last month, she happened to bump into another desi beauty — Freida Pinto at the Amfar dinner.

The common point between Freida and Mallika is that they are Indians who are trying to make it big in Hollywood. The source says that no one expected the two to acknowledge each others presence and thought that Mallika would want to be left by herself at the exclusive event. But trust Mallika to spring a surprise when you least expect it.

“We don’t know how it all happened. But the next thing we knew was that Mallika and Freida were chatting with each other. There was no sign of any animosity between them and they even gladly posed for pictures together,” says the source.

So, what did the two talk about? “We’re not sure. But they were overheard discussing their upcoming films and life in Hollywood in general. Mallika and Freida didn’t have a common agenda, because Freida was representing a cosmetic brand while Mallika was not part of any such group. But they discussed the difference in working styles back home and in Hollywood,” says the source.

Not most Bollywood beauties like to acknowledge another actor’s presence, especially when they are at international events, so we guess this comes as a welcome change, or is it too early to say that.