If the buzz around tinsel town is any indication, it seems Ekta Kapoor has finally found her heroine for the sequel of her runaway hit, Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai (OUATIM).

After Kareena Kapoor reportedly opted out of the film toplining Akshay Kumar as an underworld don, it is learnt that Kangna Ranaut has been finalised to play his actress moll. Interestingly, she played the actress-girlfriend of Ajay Devgn's mafiosi Sultan Mirza in the first outing also.

Taking off after the end of OUATIM, with Shoaib Khan (played by Emraan Hashmi), director Milan Luthria's sequel starts with the rise of the newer don, reportedly based on Dawood Ibrahim, which is now being played by Akshay Kumar.

It is believed that Kangna's character is inspired from Mandakini, who got involved with the Dubai based don after her career in Bollywood that started on a high with Raj Kapoor's Ram Teri Ganga Maili stagnated.

A well-placed industry source informs us that producer Ekta and director Milan Luthria were looking for a suitable replacement after Kareena opted out of the sequel earlier this month.

"A couple of names were considered, but somewhere they felt that a performing actress was more needed than a starry name. Initially they weren't considering Kangna as she has already played an actress, Rehana in the first OUATIM.

And this character was said to be based on one Sona, who Haji Mastan (the inspiration of Devgn's Sultan Mirza) fell in love with and even made a movie with later," explains our source.

When contacted, Tanuj Garg, CEO of Ekta's production house said, "We're still in the process off locking the final script. After that, our priority is to finalise the second actor after Akshay.

And only then will we figure out the casting for the girls. Guess the talk of Kangna doing the OUATIM sequel is due to the fact that she's also playing the leading lady opposite John in Shootout At Wadala, which is also our production."

However, standing by the story, our source maintains, "The paperwork is still pending. So perhaps that's why Ekta's production house is not confirming Kangna's presence in OUATIM sequel to the media yet.

Besides, Akshay-Kangna is a novel combination, as the two haven't been featured together yet. And a new pairing also helps built up thecuriosity factor of a film to a considerable extent in its marketing and promotion."

Other stars playing real-life characters

Farhan Akhtar as Milkha Singh Farhan Akhtar is essaying Milkha Singh in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra's biopic on the nation's legendary athlete. The filmmaker-actor has also started training to play the role of the lifetime in his next film, which is scheduled to start shooting soon.

Anil Kapoor as Isaque Bhagwan
Anil Kapoor is portraying the former top cop, Isaque Bhagwan in Shootout At Wadala. Not surprisingly, the method actor Kapoor has also met Bhagwan to prepare for his portrayal of the real cop who gunned down Mnaya Surve (John Abraham) in Wadala in 1981.

Sanjay Dutt as a top cop and a Gujarati gangster
Sanjay Dutt is playing two characters based on real people. In Zilla Ghaziabad, he plays the cop Pritam Singh, who's entrusted with the responsibility to finish gang wars between rival factions led by Prakash Gujjar and Mahendra Fauji in the mid-1990s. In a couple of months, the actor will start shooting for Soham Shah's next based on the Porbandar based Gujarati gangster Sharman Munjha. Interestingly a film on Munjha's wife Santokben Jadeja had been made many years ago by Vinay Shukla with Shabana Azmi playing the protagonist aptly called Godmother.


Priyanka Chopra and Kangna as real-life models
A couple of years ago, in Madhur Bhandarkar's Fashion, both Priyanka Chopra's and Kangna Ranaut's characters were said to be based on real models. While some portion of Chopra's character Meghna was reportedly inspired by Shivani Kapoor, Ranaut's Shonali Gujral was believed to be based on Geetanjali Nagpal, a former model from Delhi who was found in a sad state on the city streets.