Sridevi in Chandni (Image courtesy: YouTube)
Highlights
- The filming of a song for 102 Not Out was cancelled
- Ram Gopal Varma postponed an announcement related to his new film
- Sridevi died of a cardiac arrest
The shocked and grieving film industry has cancelled several planned events. Actress Shabana Azmi posted a tweet today announcing that she and husband Javed Akhtar were calling off the grand Holi party they host every year. Javed Akhtar's ex-wife Honey Irani, who wrote Sridevi's 1992 film
Lamhe, was among those of the film fraternity who visited the home of Sridevi's brother-in-law Anil Kapoor this morning. Her son Farhan Akhtar accompanied her. See the tweet posted by Shabana Azmi:
Yesterday, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma tweeted that he and actor Nagarjuna were postponing the announcement of the title and poster of their new film. RGV, a vocal admirer of the late actress, directed her in the Telugu films
Kshana Kshanam and
Govinda Govinda. Nagarjuna and Sridevi co-starred in
Govinda Govinda and other films such as
Aakhari Poratam and
Khuda Gawah.
In Mumbai, the filming of a song for
102 Not Out, starring Sridevi's former co-stars Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor, was cancelled. The song, written by Mr Bachchan and titled
Baadduummbaa (a word he frequently uses on social media), was scheduled to begin filming yesterday. Director Umesh Shukla told news agency IANS, "As a mark of respect to the sudden and untimely demise of our legendary actress Sridevi, we decided to cancel our today's song shoot of
102 Not Out. May God give peace to her soul and strength to her family."
Sridevi died on Saturday after 'accidentally drowning' in her Dubai hotel bathroom, Gulf News reports. She was 54 and had attended the week-long wedding festivities of actor Mohit Marwah, a nephew of her husband Boney Kapoor. Sridevi will be flown to Mumbai soon and a funeral is expected to follow. South superstars Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan are expected to attend - the actors were Sridevi's co-stars in 1976 film
Moondru Mudichu, her first film as a lead actress. Sridevi collaborated with both Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan separately in several later films, both down South and in Bollywood. The actors were among the first to post messages of condolence on Twitter after Sridevi died.
Sridevi, considered India's first female superstar, is remembered for her performances in films such as
Nagina,
Sadma,
Mr India and
Chandni. She married Boney Kapoor in 1996 and then took a break of several years to raise their daughters Janhvi and Khushi. In 2012, Sridevi made a glorious return to the screen in the acclaimed
English Vinglish. She made two subsequent films -
Puli in Tamil and
MOM in Hindi.
Sridevi, recipient of the Padma Shri, will be seen posthumously in Shah Rukh Khan's
Zero later this year.