Spice Girl Melanie will soon sing a duet with Sunidhi Chauhan while Ricky Martin might sing another with Pakistani music group Junoon.

It is the international business tycoon Vijay Mallya, who is behind this amazing coup. Yes, the industrialist turned politician is now nose-diving into Bollywood.

He is producing a film titled Rakth, to be directed by Mahesh Manjrekar. Shooting for the film is scheduled to start, as of now, in another three months or so.

There will also be an item number by the latest sensation, Yana Gupta.

The star cast of the film is equally hot, comprising of Bipasha Basu and Sanjay Dutt. Mallya claims that his story has "an even better storyline than [Ram Gopal Varma's] Bhoot."

Mallya claims that he personally chose the lead pair. Since the hero had an action role, he opted for Sanjay. The heroine is a sensuous tarot reader who sees all kinds of strange things. Shades of The Sixth Sense? Bips and Sanju, he says, are the faces that he instinctively felt were just right for the film.

What got Mallya interested in film production? Apparently, he claims that Bollywood directors and storywriters had been sending him feelers for a while. So, he thought, why not give it a shot?

The fact that Mallya owns homes and gardens the world over certainly helped, as he can easily film overseas. In fact, Rakth might be largely shot in South Africa, where Mallya has extensive holdings. Manjrekar will go across to the continent shortly to look at Mallya's property there, with an eye to choosing locations and settings.

Incidentally, this may not be Mallya's first production. Apparently, he is the chief backer of Pamela Rooks' production of Mahesh Dattani's play Dance Like A Man. Rooks had told rediff.com that she had begun her film on a small budget from NFDC, and had then been helped out by 'corporate houses'. The corporate houses turn out to be Mallya's companies.

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