‘What’s Your Rashee?’ is a 3-hour saga!

Gowariker���s What���s your Raashee is going to be 3 hours long, if not longer.And at least 40 minutes of those 3 hours will be suffusedwith songs since Raashee has 13 songs.���But they���re brief songs, none of them longer than three minutes,��� says Ashutosh. ���Besides, the argument that sales of popcorn suffer when films arelonger doesn���t hold water. How many of those feel-goodpopcorn-khao-mast-ho-jao films with the supposedly-correct playing- time havedone well? No . I don���t think a film���s length decides itsboxoffice destiny. If it did then Lagaan and Jodha-Akbar wouldn���t haveworked. I���m not the least worried about the playing time of Raashee.���Condensing the story of one wannabebridegroom���s tryst with 12 different prospective brides wasn���teasy for Ashutosh. ���It has been a tough task. There were somany tracks and characters in the original novel. We had to modify andcondense the novel considerably. While adapting we removed and added a fewthings to make it cinematic, with the author���s permission ofcourse.��� Earlier the maximum number of roles (nine) inHindi cinema were played by Sanjeev Kumar in Naya Din Nayi Raat. Nowthere���s Priyanka Chopra in What���s Your Raashee playing 12parts,���And it���s not 12 girls from different parts of the country,as people are saying,��� warns Ashutosh. ���All 12 girls that Priyankaplays are Gujarati . And unlike Sanjeev Kumar in Naya Din Nayi Raat, noprosthetics here. He played old men, young men, short men , fat men.... Allthe girls in Raashee are between the age of 23 and 24. They are different indress, mannerisms, speech, hairstyle , etc. That���sit.���The film has been making news for its lead pair���spersonal relationship going kaput. But Ashutosh has taken the trivial publicity in his stride.���A film is talked about for variousreasons. It can���t be helped. The whole Harman-Priyanka equation did getover-blown. But finally it���s the film that talks. I wanted to keep the film���s subject private until at least the first day of shooting.But since What���s your Raashee is based on a well-known novel (MadhuRye���s Kimball Ravenswood) all anyone had to do was google and get the whole subject.��� Also , the same story was made into atelevision serial Mr Yogi in 1989. Laughs Ashutosh, ���Itwas at about the same time that I was a tv actor doing Kachchi Dhoop. We���re all aware Ketan Mehta made the same subject.And did it soeffectively.���