Aishwarya Rai fallout: Kareena hit by preggie clause

The Indian film industry has often been very harsh with its married heroines.
 
A year back Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was booted out from 'Heroine' as she was pregnant.

Madhur Bhandarkar was in a fix when Ash got pregnant during the making of 'Heroine' and had to let her go and subsequently stop shooting for the film.

Actress Kareena Kapoor stepped into her shoes and comfortably completed the film and gathered rave comments for her performance.

But just when Kareena was comfortably perched right at the top of her career as an actress and there was no stopping her from staying there for a while; she got the big jolt when she was thrown out of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Ram Leela'.

Kareena wouldn't have dreamt in her wildest imagination that 'pregnancy' or a mere clause would one day come back and haunt her and forcibly place her in Aishwarya's shoes.
 
Even though Kareena is not married yet or revealed any plans to expand her family with Saif Ali Khan, she has been forced to step aside from a much-coveted Bhansali film.

All Kareena did was object to the pregnancy clause which clearly stated that she could not get pregnant while filming 'Ram Leela'.

For the uninitiated, the fact that Kareena was Bhansali's first choice for 'Leela's role was an open secret. However, things went awry ever since news creeped out about Kareena's impending marriage with Saif Ali Khan finally being confirmed for October 2012.

The fact that things were not quite right between Bhansali and the Kapoor girl emerged when there was an initial buzz that both parties could not reach on a consensus on her remuneration.

Kareena announced it's all about money but Bhansali refuted it and said he didn't want a married woman to play 'Leela'.

Now, according to the latest report in Times of India it's actually the 'pregnancy clause' in the contract that stopped Kareena from signing on the dotted line.
 
Taking cue from Madhur Bhandarkar, Bhansali didn't want to risk his project.
 
Bollywood is getting increaingly stringent about the contracts they draw up for the leading ladies.

As more and more actresses get married, or get engaged to their boyfriends or indulge in live-in relationships, filmmakers feel justified in getting their legal teams to draw up water-tight contracts.

While such clauses are a common affair in Hollywood, this is probably a new concept in Bollywood and can be safely termed as a direct fallout of the Aishwarya Rai-Madhur Bhandarkar-Heroine debacle.
 
However, let's not miss the moot point that Kareena had a problem signing such a contract due to that single clause. Is the actress planning to embrace motherhood soon after her marriage with Saif?
 
Soon after her wedding and her honeymoon in December, Kareena is expected to resume work for Prakash Jha's 'Satyagraha' in January 2013.

Jha plans to release 'Satyagraha' on August 15, 2013 and considering his tight schedule it is very unlikely that Kareena will take a chance and get pregnant during this period.

If she does, Jha will have his task cut out for him or might rue the day he signed the contract with Kareena. Or did he also squeeze in the pregnancy clause into his heroine's contract?
 
Watch this space for further updates on the pregnancy saga that refuses to die down in Bollywood.

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