Aishwarya Rai as Anarkali, Amitabh Bachchan as Akbar and Abhishek as Salim: Why the idea was dropped

A film like Mughal-E-Azam can never be made twice. No matter how big the casting coup might be. And that is exactly what happened when a producer from south expressed his desire to remake the classic with the Bachchan family. The producer wanted to remake the classic starring Prithviraj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar in a royal but toxic father-son relationship.

Who'd play what

Filmmaker Mehul Kumar has revealed in an interview how one producer from south came upto him to expressing desire to make Mughal-e-Azam remake with the Bachchans. He wanted to cast Amitabh Bachchan as emperor Akbar, Abhishek Bachchan as Salim, Jaya Bachchan as Jodha Bai and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as Anarkali.

Why the idea was dropped

Talking to Bollywood Thikana, Mehul Kumar revealed that when the producer approached Big B he was asked to consult with Kumar first. However, the filmmaker was of the opinion that a film like Mughal-e-azama shouldn't be remade and shouldn't even be touched. He added that there was no doubt about the film being compared to the original which was a historic landmark for the Indian film industry.

Aishwarya's look test as Mumtaz

A few days back, a couple of pictures of Aishwarya Rai Bachchana's look test for Mumtaz had gone viral. Seeing the breathtaking pictures, netizens were convinced that if there is one actress who could pull of a role like this, it had to be the Bachchan bahu. The former Miss World looked ethereal and nothing less than a vision in those dreamy pictures.

"The only person for whom a Taj can be built today," a fan rightly said so. "My goodness this woman. I'm going to build taj mahal for her. What's the rate of marble on the market right now?" were some comments on the picture doing the rounds on reddit.