Karan Johar gave a surprising announcement on August 9 about his next directorial, Takth. A multi-starrer in every sense, the movie features an enviable cast in Ranveer Singh, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal, Bhumi Pednekar, Janhvi Kapoor and Anil Kapoor. Takth is reportedly a historical drama, that is supposedly based on the life of King Shajahan and his children. Other reports mention that it would be based on Shakespeare's King Lear. Whatever the project's inspiration is, we can hardly contain our excitement for Takht.

Before Vicky Kaushal, there were talks that Ranbir Kapoor was sought out as an option. Apparently, the role is of Ranveer's villainous brother. However, even though he has worked with Karan in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Ranbir politely rejected the role. As per a report in Pinkvilla, a source close to the film told them, "Ranbir has his plate full with Brahmastra which is going to be a three part movie. After that, he has Karan Malhotra’s Shamshera and Luv Ranjan’s next with Ajay Devgn. So he didn’t have dates to allot for this movie. Hence he had to opt out of Takht, despite loving the script and wanting to do it."

There were also rumours that the makers had approached Varun Dhawan too, before they finally selected Vicky Kaushal. Vicky, who is on a roll after all the acclaim he got for Raazi and Sanju, had earlier worked with Karan in Lust Stories. While we are truly happy for Vicky for bagging such a biggie, we do wonder what Takht would have been if Ranbir had agreed to play Ranveer's brother.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 10, 2018 06:28 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).