Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan will play a friendly ghost in a new film that will also star his rival and reigning superstar Shah Rukh Khan, reports a city newspaper.

Badshah Bachchan and King Khan, portrayed by the media as locked in a popularity battle, hardly get to see much of each other in the film "Bhootnath" because the ghost is visible only to the film's child protagonist.

"We don't have elaborate sequences where Bachchan and Shah Rukh strike up a conversation," director Vivek Sharma told the Mumbai Mirror newspaper.

Khan, who acts as the child's father, shares some screen space with Bachchan in the film's climax scene.

Bachchan, 64, and SRK, 41, have largely avoided commenting about each other. However they have lost no opportunity at taking subtle digs at each other after Khan took over a television quiz show that Bachchan once hosted with huge success.