Ananya Panday to work with Zoya Akhtar in her next

By: Mohnish Singh

Renowned filmmaker Zoya Akhtar, who recently celebrated 12 years of her award-winning debut film Luck By Chance (2009), is gearing up to start work on her next directorial venture. According to reports, Akhtar has roped in Khaali Peeli (2020) star Ananya Panday to play the female lead in the untitled project.

Though not much else is known about the upcoming film at the moment, a source close to the development informs an online publication that it is expected to go before cameras in 2021 only.

“The film is presently in the pre-production stage so nothing much is known about it except for the fact that Zoya and Ananya have agreed to work together. Ananya is a big fan of Zoya and is looking forward to working with the filmmaker. The movie is expected to roll sometime this year,” shares the source.

Meanwhile, Ananya Panday is currently working on Dharma Productions’ next with filmmaker Shakun Batra. The untitled film, which went on floors in the last quarter of 2020, also stars Deepika Padukone and Siddhant Chaturvedi in lead roles.

For the uninitiated, Chaturvedi shot to overnight fame with his silver screen debut in Zoya Akhtar’s Oscar-nominated Gully Boy (2019), also starring Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt. He has bagged several big projects since then.

In addition to Shakun Batra’s next directorial, Panday also stars in Dharma Productions’ much-awaited bilingual film Liger. Jointly produced by Karan Johar, Charmme Kaur, Apoorva Mehta, Hiroo Yash Johar, and Puri Jagannadh under the banners of Dharma Productions and Puri Connects, the film also features Arjun Reddy (2017) actor Vijay Deverakonda in the lead role. While Deverakonda will be making his Bollywood debut with Liger, Panday will set her foot in Telugu cinema.

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