Heena Sharma Blog

The Income Tax (I-T) department Thursday carried out raids on the residences of four top Kannada film actors and three leading producers in a simultaneous state-wide exercise, officials said. Actors Shivarajkumar and Puneeth Rajkumar, sons of Kannada thespian late Rajkumar, and Yash and Sudeep came under the I-T lens, officials told PTI, as the bigwigs of the state film industry woke up to the knocks of Income Tax officials on their doors. The raids were carried out across 23 locations in the state and involved around 200 sleuths, they said. 'Rockline' Venkatesh, C R Manohar and Vijay Kiraganduru are the film producers whose residences were raided, the officials said. Nicknamed 'Hat trick star', Shivarajkumar is the son-in-law of former chief minister late S Bangarappa. 'Power-star' Puneeth Rajkumar shot to fame for his role as a child artist in the Kannada movie 'Bettada Hoovu' and had won a National Film Award. Read More

" Baahubali " star Prabhas ' next big screen outing " Saaho " is set to hit the theatres on Independence Day , August 15. The much ambitious multilingual project is being shot in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu simultaneously. It will release in all three languages on the same day. The movie has high-octane action sequences choreographed by international action master Kenny Bates. The film features Shraddha Kapoor as the female lead and also stars Jackie Shroff, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Mandira Bedi, Chunky Pandey, Mahesh Manjrekar, Arun Vijay, Murali Sharma among others. Music composer trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have created the music for the film and Amitabh Bhattacharya has penned the lyrics. A UV Creations production, "Saaho" is produced by Vamsi and Pramod. Directed by Sujeeth, the project has been filmed at striking locations in India and abroad. Read More Business Standard

Actor Rahul Bose , who was last seen in "Vishwaroopam II", has said that he will start shooting for " Baahubali: Before the Beginning " in December. He was interacting with media at the inauguration of an art show called 'Breaking Barriers' on Tuesday here. Sporting a bearded look when Rahul was proded about it, he said: "I am doing a prequel to 'Baahubali' for Netflix. It is called as ' Baahubali: Before the Beginning '. "I have a big role in it. We will start shooting December beginning. My character has a bearded look, and I don't want to sport a fake beard for the next six months. I will have the same look." " Baahubali: Before the Beginning " is a web series based on Anand Neelakantan's 2017 novel "The Rise of Sivagami", and is a Netflix Original from India. A part of the Baahubali franchise, the series is directed by Deva Katta and co-directed by Praveen Sataru. It is

Netflix lifted the curtains off its plans for Asia expansion by announcing the launch of 17 new originals, nine of them hailing from India. The announcement was made by Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings and chief content officer Ted Sarandos at the See What's Next: Asia event here. "What we do is very special. We invest in stories and we commission some of the best stories around the world," Hastings said. "And in particular with Asian filmmakers, storytellers from India, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and everywhere throughout Asia, we are producing stories and sharing them. What happens when you share stories, it builds connections," he added. The line-up of its made-in-Asia shows also includes five Anime titles from Japan and original productions in Thai, Korean and Chinese languages. "Our core belief is that great stories can come from anywhere and right now, they are also coming from Asia. Whether it is 'Sacred Games' o