Actors being replaced at the last moment is not a new phenomenon in Bollywood. There is a legion of reasons actors are replaced in a project, one of them being the unavailability of combination dates. The same seems to have happened with Mulk (2018) star Taapsee Pannu.
According to reports, Taapsee Pannu has been replaced in filmmaker Anurag Basu’s next, which is rumoured to be a sequel to his 2007 hit Life In A… Metro, headlined by Irrfan Khan, Kay Kay Menon, Sharman Joshi, Kangana Ranaut, Shilpa Shetty and Konkona Sen Sharma. Dangal (2016) fame Fatima Sana Shaikh is said to be replacing the actress in the sequel.
Reportedly, Taapsee Pannu has all her dates booked for the coming few months. Presently, she is shooting for Sujoy Ghosh’s Badla, along with Amitabh Bachchan. After wrapping up Badla, she will move on to Womaniya and Tadka. Her jam-packed schedule leaves her with no time to sign a new film, and hence director Anurag Basu had to replace her with Fatima Sana Shaikh.
“Dates were a major conflict and that is the reason why Anurag Basu had to look out for different options for the lead. And lucky for him, he had already spoken to Fatima in the past. So, when dates did become an issue, it was an easy fix for him this time around,” a source reveals.
An official announcement is awaited on this new development.
Alia Bhatt at the Red Sea Film Festival where she spoke about the scale of Alpha Getty Images 
