MUMBAI: If all had gone well the spirited and successful, Southern spice girl Kajal Aggarwal would have made a spectacular double-language debut in Mumbai by the Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap director. The plan was to cast Kajal in both the Telugu and Hindi versions of Puri Jagannath’s The Businessman.

A source tells Businessofcinema.com, “There are two versions of The Businessman in Telugu and Hindi. The Telugu version is to star Andhra superstar Mahesh Babu and the Hindi version is going to be made with Abhishek Bachchan. Kajal Aggarwal was to play the female lead in both the versions of The Businessman.”

However Kajal signed Singham as her first Hindi film, thereby killing the novelty of her appearance in The Businessman.

Apparently Kajal has been dropped from the Hindi version of the film with Bachchan.

When contacted director Puri Jaganaath confirmed, “Kajal Aggarwal is not in the Hindi version of The Businessman with Abhishek. We’re looking for a fresh face but she will play the lead in the Telugu version with Mahesh Babu, which I start shooting next month.”

The two versions of the story will be shot one after the other and not simultaneously as a bi-lingual. There will be some culture-specific changes in the plot’s crossover into Hindi.

Laughs Puri, “How can the Telugu and the Hindi films be the same? One is designed for Mahesh Babu in Telugu and the other for Abhishek Bachchan in Hindi.”

In fact this is another reason why the leading lady is being changed in Hindi. Puri didn’t want the two versions of The Businessman to look like replicas of one another.

He adds, “However both the Telugu and Hindi versions are set in Mumbai. So the changes in the plot would be minimal.”