Alia Bhatt's south film will be with Mani Ratnam

Mumbai: Actress Alia Bhatt says she is keen to work with veteran director Mani Ratnam.

"My dad (Mahesh Bhatt) keeps pushing me to watch regional films. He had said that I should definitely do Bengali films. I've always wanted to work with Mani Ratnam, so maybe I'll go down south and work with Mani sir," Alia said here when asked if she intended to try her hand at regional cinema.

Earlier media reports mentioned that Mani Ratnam's “O Kadhal Kanmani”, a Tamil film was to have Alia in the lead opposite Dulquer Salman. Also another report claimed that Ratnam wanted Alia and Varun Dhawan for the same film in Hindi, but when things didn't work out, he made it in Tamil with Dulquer and Nithya Menen.

The Hindi remake of the film titled “Ok Jaanu” will now be produced by Karan Johar and will star Shraddha Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur.

Alia and her “Kapoor and Sons” co-star Fawad Khan were here to unveil a Filmfare magazine cover, featuring Alia seated on a sofa in a long-flowing gown with an interesting new hairstyle, while Fawad is seated on the top of the sofa.

The “Student Of The Year” actress said: “For the first time, I'm posing with Fawad on a cover, so that's also a first, so I like firsts because they're always interesting and exciting, and this is one of my favourite covers because we tried something different, we went to a completely weird, strange location, so I really hope it's worth it."