by Subhash K Jha

Right after Madhur Bhandarkar completes shooting Corporate, the director intends to go to the last film in his proposed trilogy on the metro-centric lifestyles.

The film will go on the floors immediately after Corporate . "I've done just a few days of shooting for Corporate. But I feel I've already shot the entire film. It's all worked out on my head. And the cast is so good—that's half the battle. K.K. Menon has shaped into one of our finest actors."

And you've to see Bipasha in my film. She will shock and surprise all her critics. Sammir Dattani and Minissha Lamba are also very talented youngsters. Minissha showed sparks in her first film (Yahan). But Sammir will surprise audiences completely. I feel a lot of careers will take off in unexpected ways after Corporate."

He's just shot a schedule in Malad (outskirts of Mumbai) where the set within a corporate organization looks so convincing, you wonder which came first, entrepreneurship or movies about entrepreneurs.

Madhur laughs. "There haven't been too many films on the corporate world. I can only remember Shyam Benegal's Kalyug which was amazing. What a cast Shyam Babu had! I'd like to think my cast would also make Corporate special...I've got known and unknown faces. It's an eclectic mix."

He then gets excited about Signal. "It's the third part of my trilogy. Page 3 was about the world of party-hoppers. Corporate is about the business world. Signal will take my cinema into the underbelly of Mumbai...those people whom we see at the traffic signals...the newspapers hawkers, the fruit and flower sellers, the beggars and eunuchs...where do they come from..where do they go?"

The film will have only new faces in the cast. "It has to be like that, no?" reasons Madhur. "You can't have known faces playing these anonymous creatures who appear and vanish when we stop our cars at the traffic signals."

Madhur wants to film this hardcore-reality tale immediately after Corporate is complete in early 2006. "I've got to get it out of my system before I move to something else."

Madhur is the second director to attempt a trilogy of films. Deepa Mehta has just completed her elmental trilogy Fire, Earth and Water.