Ranbir Kapoor was to star in Munnabhai 3

While everyone and their brother has been speculating that Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Raju Hirani met Ranbir Kapoor in Los Angeles and the new Munnabhai film will star the Kapoor lad, the fact is that though Chopra did indeed met Ranbir in LA, Raju hadn’t even gone to LA after the release of 3 Idiots.

But he had gone underground... to a yoga and meditation centre in Mulshi near Pune where the lack of connectivity allowed him to disconnect from the brouhaha surrounding the Khan film and the entire attendant collection comparison chaos between his film and the other.

Now that Raju has surfaced he completely scotches the Ranbir rumour saying quite categorically, “Whenever the next Munnabhai film will be made, it will be made with Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi.”

He clarifies though that Munnabhai will not travel to Amrika because in the original story he was supposed to meet the President of the United States of America and obviously now, that is not an option. Raju has an idea which will take the character to another level but hasn’t started work on it yet as he is still not completely out of 3 Idiots what with the DVD and The making of the film still to be done. He also has another idea for his next film other than the Munnabhai film but isn’t sure which he will work on first.

Talking about his six days away from civilization, as most of us understand it, Raju says with a smile, “The first day I was worried about messages and calls. But from the next day on, it was sheer happiness to not have a phone.”