It looks like the season of real-life characters on screen. Madhur Bhandarkar's Corporate — the second part of a trilogy on metropolitan mores and communities — which will feature Bipasha Basu as a steel-willed business tycoon, is based on the life of a real female entrepreneur.

She's a high-profile society regular, well known for her power, panache and sex appeal.

Reveals Madhur, "That's why I wanted to cast a woman, and not a girl. The trouble is, most of our high-profile heroines seem to have stepped out of their teens... which is a good thing, but not for this film.

While Page 3 needed an innocent girl to play the ingénue, Corporate needs a full-blooded woman with tremendous reserves of sensuality, nerves of steel and a look of gritty determination.

Bipasha fitted the bill perfectly. I don't think she has ever done a role like this before. In fact, I don't think any leading lady in our films has done something like Corporate."

The film, produced by Sahara's Percept Pictures, rolls on October 1. Madhur is now busy casting the other roles. "Not too many faces will be known or recognisable. I want to get actors from theatre, who will look their parts," says the director.

The lead opposite Bipasha requires a suave, 45-year-old actor. "I'll probably get him from English theatre." There's also a younger romantic pair in the script, for which Madhur has almost finalised two promising youngsters.

"I want the film to be as hard-hitting, edgy, raw and real as Chandni Bar and Page 3. There'll be no compromises. The film will have songs composed by Shamir Tandon, but they will be part of the narrative.

The important thing for me is to build on the reputation of an intense filmmaker, which I've earned again after Page 3," says Madhur, who has just returned from the Kerala film festival where Page 3 was the closing film.

"Malyalis who couldn't follow a word of the Hindi dialogues clapped and cried. It felt so good. I can't afford to slip up now." As Corporate begins filming, speculation about Bipasha's true-life parallel is bound to grow. "I can see a lot of Page 3 regulars looking into the mirror to ask, ‘Is it me?'" grins the director.