Casting coups in Bollywood
Devdas, 2002
Devi out Dixit in. That was the buzz when Madhuri Dixit displaced Sridevi as the number one Bollywood heroine in the 1990s.
But the question that haunted film lovers in the new millennium was: After Madhuri, who?
The obvious choice was Aishwarya Rai, especially after Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam became a big hit in 1999.
It was then that Bhansali's ambitious Devdas came along. The film ran into trouble after its producer Bharat Shah was arrested for alleged underworld links.
Everyone thought the Rs 500 million film -- which had a fading Madhuri and the rising Aishwarya acting for the first time with superstar Shah Rukh Khan -- would never see the light of day.
But the trio obviously worked for the audiences, and the film did well at the box office.