March 13, 2010 (Sampurn Wire):The buzz is that ‘Tansen’ is being revived by its makers Rajshri Productions and director Satish Kaushik. However, the leading man is yet to be finalised. While earlier there were talks of Himesh Reshammiya followed by Abhishek Bachchan being approached to play the title role, the current situation is that none of them is really in the reckoning and it would be some time before the eventual name emerges.

Informs a source, “A couple of years back when ‘Tansen’ first came in news, there was a surprise in store as the name which seemed to be on the top of the list to play the title role was none other than Himesh Reshammiya. Riding high on the success of ‘Aap Kaa Surroor’ and expected to strike big with ‘Karzzzz’, Himesh’s name also made sense for some since he is a singer, musician and actor all rolled into one, something which would have gone perfectly with the character of ‘Tansen’. However, all of this only turned out to be only speculation and grapevine with Rajshri folks waiting to make a formal announcement.”

This was the time when buzz started making the rounds that a new name had been more or finalised for ‘Tansen’ - Abhishek Bachchan. Riding pretty high as far as presence amongst the bigwigs of Bollywood was concerned; Abhishek’s name did create quite some stor in the industry. With projects like ‘Delhi 6′ (Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra), ‘Dostana’ (Karan Johar) and ‘Raavan’ (Mani Ratnam) under his belt, he was pretty much the name to be referred to after the Top-5 (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan). With a definite charm and intensity working in his favour, it appeared that Abhishek was the man for Barjatyas and Satish Kaushik.

However, as things stand today, Satish Kaushik has vehemently denies any actor being signed for the title role yet. “The casting process is still on and no one has been formally signed yet. It would take around a couple of months before a name can be announced. Whether it is Abhishek or someone else is something that would be known in due course of time.”

Lighting up when asked about the film, Kaushik says, “It is a fantastic script and mark my words, it is one of the greatest films in the making. Yes, it was on hold but it would be certainly made. Trust me, out of all the films that I have directed so far, this would be one of my biggest ever.”

Well, one looks forward to how the project shapes up from here, with or without Abhishek!

-Rudhir Burman/ Sampurn Wire