In May 2011, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Madhur Bhandarkar announced the film Heroine at the 64th Cannes Film Festival. A few months later, Aishwarya opted out of the project due to her pregnancy and gave birth to Aaradhya, her and Abhishek Bachchan's first child, in November 2011. The former Miss World was replaced by Kareena Kapoor Khan in the film.
After Aishwarya left the movie, Madhur claimed that she 'hid the truth' about her pregnancy. There were also reports that Rai's decision to pull out of the project had led to the production house UTV suffering a loss of around Rs 18 crore. Her father-in-law Abhishek Bachchan reacted strongly to such reports and defended the actress.
In an interview with DNA, Amitabh said, "Everybody knew that Aishwarya was married when she signed the film. So you mean to say that actors can’t get married or have children? I don’t think this can be a part of any contract that you cannot get married or have children if you working in a project. Whatever has happened between Aishwarya, Madhur (Bhandarkar, co-producer) and UTV (co-producer) is between them. I know that the rumours going around are not true. I hope that the truth comes out soon."
A source close to the actress was also quoted telling DNA, "They have not paid her anything for the film. All this hue and cry about losses is false as they had only shot for seven to 10 days, out of which the first few days were spent in photo-shoots and location shoots. The actual film shooting hadn’t even begun. Ash is very upset with the fact that she’s being targeted for being pregnant — a time when people should be happy for her."
Heroine was ultimate released in September 2012. It also starred Randeep Hooda, Arjun Rampal, Sanjay Suri, Shahana Goswami, Divya Dutta, and Mugdha Godse in supporting roles. The film received mixed to negative reviews from the critics and failed at the box office as well.
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