/> Ram Gopal Varma has forgotten Phoonk. He's now on to his next level of excitement, a film about the role function and parameters of the media.

Says the enterprising director, "The media has now become part of the very system it was meant to criticize monitor and correct. There's a socio-political hierarchy in our country where we have the government, followed by the wealth-creators and finally the power-mongers.

All these three groups of movers and shakers are supposed to be working for the good of the common people. Now, the only medium the common man has of knowing what these triple-tiered architects of the country are up to is the media."

Ramu feels the mainstream media has lost its focus and therefore its connectivity "Today by the very virtue of its position and the cut-throat competition the media has become as powerful as the agencies it was once supposed to monitor.

I feel the media has become integrated into the system that it was once supposed check and curb. It's this dilemma that I want to dramatize in my film."

All this, you tell maverick Varma, sounds highly complicated. "It is not! See it's the media's domain to project the socio-political facts as accurately and faithfully as possible.

But because of the power that the media has accumulated it cannot afford to do the job it is meant to. I'm reminded of a dialogue from my film Company.

'Yeh hamare dhande ki jaat hai'. It's the nature of the job. And I'm not here to point accusing fingers at the media. Corruption and compromise have crept into every walk of life. Aren't we filmmakers corrupt?"

Ramu hastens to clarify that his film won't be an anti-media tirade. "Not at all. The media is a part of our corrupt system, not the reason for it. I'm not trying to get even with the media or anything.

My film has got nothing to do with the film media. So relax.There will be no mention of film media. It's about high-level politics and the national new channels, so it isn't about the print media."

Ask him if his blogging brought on this media consciousness and Ramu waves off the question impatiently. "Long before I began blogging I thought of this media film. I think the media needs to be looked at in the proper perspective."

Ramu starts his media movie in November. The cast is not yet finalized. But the film will have A-listers in its cast.

"It will be very big film. But it won't have songs and dances. It will be done in an extremely real tone. I don't think 'real' and 'entertaining' are mutually exclusive any more. Look at the opening Phoonk and Rock On got."

But both are at heart 'formula' films, right? "Phoonk didn't have sung songs or the so-called commercial trappings. It was a small film that became big.

My media film won't be a small film at all. This is a big one, not in the Contract/Phoonk range at all. Because of its scope scale and reach this will be a huge film, maybe my cosliest ever.

I'll be talking about the biggest industrialists and media persons in the same breath. So obviously I can't be sitting on one set and shooting such grand lives."

And yes, there will be pointed references to real-life entrepreneurs and politicians and the nexus between them. "Not that I will be consciously putting real-life characters on film. But when you make a realistic film there're bound to be real-life parallels.Any film that goes into unexplored territory is bound to appeal to people. "

Rohit Banwalikar is writing this media epic for Ramu.

"He's done nothing before. Totally new, " informs Ramu.

So what's new?