Tarun Mansukhani was Karan Johar’s favourite muse. Right from getting paint and thermocol organised for art director Sharmishta Roy for Kuch Kuch Hota Hai to halting the tailors for a minor wardrobe malfunction in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna and even fetching Karan’s favourite brew. There wasn’t a snitch Tarun couldn’t snatch out of the bratty boy’s frame as his consistent First Assistant Director.

Sixty Indian films are set to travel to Stuttgart, Germany, to celebrate the fourth annual 'Bollywood and Beyond Film Festival'.

According to festival director Oliver Mahn, the festival will improve ties between Stuttgart and its Indian partner-city Mumbai.

Bollywood is booming. That's the message coming from the Mumbai-based movie business, which makes 800 films each year - twice that of Hollywood - and generates the biggest ticket sales in the world.

Its colorful storylines peppered with song and dance have won millions of fans.

But now the Indian film industry is emerging as the new global power player in the movies, and its directors and actors are daring to push the boundaries of its well-told tales with fresh confidence.

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma took time off from finishing his Sholay extravaganza and planning the start of shooting (it's on July 4, in Hyderabad) for Sarkar 2, to talk to BT about his forthcoming films. This, in the manner of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather II, promises to be one of the most eagerly looked forward to films in Bollywood... if only because Varma has got Brand Bachchan together for the first time. Excerpts from an interview:

Amitabh Bachchan has always been known for being son Abhishek's biggest fan, standing up for him even when his career was going through quite a rough patch. But it looks like there is one strength that the Big B wishes the junior Bachchan would pull his socks up over - and no, it’s not his acting or dancing skills, but his rather weak Hindi.

Another movie that you are shooting for is called Drona, which is a superhero film. Abhishek Bachchan plays the title character and you play his bodyguard incidentally. That’s odd, isn’t it?

I don’t think it’s odd, it’s just different. And that is what is exciting about it because Abhishek plays a character in which he does not know that he has the potential to be a superhero. That will be thrust upon him. In the film I am brought up ever since childhood to protect him.

For those who were waiting to see deathly tension to erupt on the sets of Pradeep Sarkar's Laga Chunri Mein Daag after what's widely been labelled the wedding snub, there was disappointing news.

There were absolutely no cold vibes between Rani Mukerji and Abhishek Bachchan when he returned to work after a two-month break.