Mumbai: The critical and commercial buzz around Rituparno Ghosh’s first Hindi film “Raincoat” is strong enough to prompt the director and leading lady Aishwarya Rai to work together again. Ghosh and Aishwarya are all set to team up for the third time after the Bengali “Chokher Bali” and the Hindi “Raincoat”. The new Hindi film is expected to cast Aishwarya as Shabana Azmi’s daughter.

“It’s my third film in the mother-daughter trilogy after ‘Unnishe April’ and ‘Titli’,” Ghosh told IANS. While Aparna Sen and Debashree Roy had played mother and daughter in the first, real-life mother-daughter Aparna and Konkona Sen Sharma starred in the latter.

This project would precede Ghosh’s other plan to make a Hindi film with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead. “Since that requires to be shot in winter, I’ll go ahead with my other film instead,” says Ghosh. The decision to make another mother-daughter film with the Aishwarya-Shabana combo is prompted by the positive reactions to “Raincoat” which has outlived both its regional and arthouse tags. — HNS