While we were gearing up to watch Katrina Kaif play Sonia Gandhi in Prakash Jha’s forthcoming film Rajneeti, filmmaker Krishan Shah, 71, has pulled off a casting coup by roping in dhak dhak girl Madhuri Dixit to be Indira Gandhi in his biopic called Mother: The Indira Gandhi Story. But Dixit, who lives in the US , clarifies: “I have not signed the film yet. The director approached me for the role earlier this month and I have expressed an interest.”

Shooting is planned for late 2010, with talks on with Hollywood stars Tom Hanks and Tommy Lee Jones to play two politicians. Nana Patekar is being considered for the role of Jayaprakash Narayan while Dharmendra may be roped in as Motilal Nehru. “I have idolized Indira Gandhi since childhood. I never looked at her from a political point of view, she was more a woman who possessed the values I wanted to imbibe,” adds Dixit.

For the time, Dixit will remain in the US while her business manager of 26 years Rakesh Nath proceeds with talks about the script the director. “It is up to the director to take up the matter with me when he visits Mumbai in December. We need to work out details like the availability of dates,” he says.