Is Rimi Sen trying to do a Gwyneth Paltrow? Like Gwy who turned fat and unattractive in Shallow Hal,an informer from London swears that Rimi had a prosthetics expert help her look gross for the new Govinda film tentatively titled Showman.The film will have Rimi in three distinct looks - very fat and ungainly, then medium sized and, finally, svelte as always.

Rimi's look is all on paper, planned well before director Tigmanshu Dhulia went to London to shoot the film.What was unplanned was Govinda's work schedule. This is the film that Neil Nitin Mukesh walked out of, days before the unit was to leave for its first outdoor shoot. Govinda stepped in and all schedules were organised as per his diary. But reportedly, he fetched up one week late for the UK stint. As it is the shoot in London had to be put off by a few days because Govinda had to be in India on those very dates to cast his vote in Parliament and save the Manmohan Singh government. But the whisper was that even after the schedule was postponed by a few days, the actor took a little longer to reach the UK. And once there, he couldn't stay back and complete the job since a Rumy Jafry film beckoned from Mumbai.

"Govinda couldn't help it. It wasn't his fault," says a Showman producer (there are four partners producing the film). "If he reached the UK late, it was because there was a systems failure and his visa got delayed. Even Celina Jaitley reached late but nobody is reporting that!"

"He couldn't stay back in London because those dates weren't with us, they were with Abbas-Mustan who are producing the Rumi Jaffry film. But they just wouldn't budge. They were so adamant about not parting with their dates that Govinda had no choice but to fly back to Mumbai."

Somewhere all this smacks of damage control because Govinda not only condensed his UK shoot of Showman but he was also said to have had a tiff with his director over the script. There was even a buzz that Govinda had walked out of the film."Not true.We complete 50 per cent of the film in September in Mumbai.You can drop by and watch Govinda and Tigmanshu at work,"negated the producer.Will do that and keep you posted.Meanwhile, looks like a visit to Abbas-Mustan" shoot should also be scheduled as news trickles in that Govinda had differences with Rumi Jafry too, and walked out of the sets for a couple of hours!

After all this,Govinda is said to be feeling distinctly persecuted, like someone out there wants him to get bad press."We have no complaints against Govinda.On the contrary, he has given us dates in September which were not originally ours,"say the Showman people. The insider also adds that unlike a lot of other actors, Govinda settles all extra expenses out of his own pocket and doesn't burden the producer.

Interestingly, one of Chennai's biggest heroes called Vikram is one of the producers of this Govinda film. With big money attracting one and all to film production, wise move by a South hero to invest in Hindi film production.Vikram is the actor who has been signed by Mani Ratnam for his next film which revolves around a gangster and a married couple.Vikram plays the main role of the gangster in the Tamil version while Abhishek Bachchan gets that plum assignment in Hindi.

A curious bit of casting by Mani Ratnam - in the Hindi version,while Abhishek plays the main role of the villain, Aishwarya Rai and Vikram play man and wife! Incidentally,Vikram doesn't know a word of Hindi and has started lessons to play his part in the Mumbai version.

By the way,Vikram is his screen name. But guess his real name? Few know that he was christened John Kennedy by his parents. The actor, however, chose to put aside the Christian name and got himself an easy screen identity like Vikram. John Abraham who is very proud that he has been accepted with open arms by the film industry despite his name is not going to be pleased with Vikram's real life story!

Bharathi S. Pradhan is managing editor of Movie Mag International