Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt has announced a new release date for her ambitious film ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ in February next year. Earlier the stars had announced that the Sanjay Leela Bhansali directorial will release on January 6, but a new date has now been announced.
This project has been particularly challenging for the actors and the makers due to the COVID-19 outbreak in India. Both Bhatt and director Bhansali contracted the virus in the midst of its shoot, but they lived to tell their triumphant tale.
“We started shooting ‘Gangubai ...’ on the 8th of December 2019 and we wrapped the film now 2 years later! This film and set has been through two lock downs, two cyclones, director and actor getting Covid during the making!!! The troubles the set has faced is another film altogether. But through all that and more, what I take away is the gigantic life changing experience,” wrote Bhatt on her Instagram a few months earlier.
Bhatt and ilmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali were also summoned by the court of additional chief metropolitan magistrate in Mumbai last May when one of the four children of Kathiawadi, Babu Rawji Shah, filed a criminal defamation case against the actress and director.
Shah claimed the movie was defamatory.
The period film, adapted from one of the chapters of author Hussain Zaidi’s book, ‘Mafia Queens of Mumbai’, features Bhatt in the title role of Gangubai, one of the most powerful, loved, and respected madams from Kamathipura during the 1960s.
