Shah Rukh Khan to play poet Sahir Ludhianvi in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Gustakhiyan?

Looks like filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali has zeroed in on Shah Rukh Khan for his ambitious biographical drama film Gustakhiyan. The movie will be based on the life of Urdu poet-lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi and Shah Rukh will be playing the lead role of Sahir.

Gustakhiyan will revolve around Sahir's relationships with several women, including poetess-novelist Amrita Pritam and singer-actress Sudha Malhotra. It will also focus on the lyricist's contribution to Bollywood, Mumbai Mirror reported. Sahir earned his first Filmfare Award in 1963 for his work in Taj Mahal and 13 years later, he bagged the Best Lyrics award for Kabhie Kabhie.

Although Shah Rukh, who had earlier worked with Bhansali in Devdas, is yet to sign the dotted lines, if all goes well, the film will start rolling in 2018. "Bhansali and SRK met late one night last week and the filmmaker handed over the complete script of the biopic to SRK, telling him that he would like to direct him in 2018. There is a lot of poetry in the film and SRK has been reading Sahir's ghazals and nazms," revealed a source to the daily.

"Bhansali and SRK have been spending a lot of time together lately, discussing work and cinema," the source added.

While the leading actress is yet to be finalised, there were reports that Priyanka Chopra was considered for the female lead. Later, Deepika Padukone had also joined the race. It now remains to be seen who will finally share the screen space with the superstar in Gustakhiyan.

Meanwhile, Bhansali is busy shooting for Padmavati along with Ranveer Singh, Deepika and Shahid Kapoor.