MUMBAI: Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of Othello starring Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, Konkana Sen Sharma and Vivek Oberoi is going to the Cannes Film festival. The makers will kick-start the promotions of the film in a big way at the festival. The entire cast of the film will be attending the festival along with director Vishal Bharadwaj.
Meanwhile, the final title of the film will be decided by a contest that will be opened up to the public next week. Three names have been short selected for the title and the general public can vote in by SMS to choose their favorite title. The short-selected names include Omkara, O Saathi Re and Issak (the western UP pronunciation of the word Ishq). The contest is titled ‘What’s in a name’ that happens to be a Shakespearian line. And that’s intentional considering the film is Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello.
Reportedly while director Vishal Bharadwaj was quite keen on the title Omkara, Ajay Devgan suggested a change in the title since Omkara is his name in the film and he didn’t want the entire focus to be on his character as the title would suggest. He said that the film belongs to the entire starcast and not just him. In fact Devgan was keen on Issak because the film is a love story. So the makers planned a contest. This will be the first Hindi film to have its title decided by the general audience.
Earlier actor-producer Upendra in Karnataka had asked the audiences to name one of his films which he ultimately called A.
