Star Entertainment India television channel is reviving the most popular show in Indian history with top Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan as its new host, a news report said Sunday.

"Kaun Banega Crorepati" — based on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" — was scrapped in January following its famous host Amitabh Bachchan's illness. The program drew millions of viewers with huge money tied to advertising sales.

The channel will start shooting the program next month and expects it to go on air by the end of January, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Samir Nair, chief executive officer of Star Entertainment India, as saying.

Khan is one of the biggest Bollywood heartthrobs of the past decade and one of the highest paid actors in the Indian movie industry.

"Bachchan expressed his disinclination to do the show and we respect his decision ... Now it's time to move on and who better to hand over the baton to than Shah Rukh Khan," Nair said.

Khan said he was pleasantly surprised when the STAR network offered him the show.

"It is a huge act to follow, that of Bachchan ... But it also excites me that I am getting an opportunity to reach out (and) talk and interact with my audience through a medium where I began my career as an actor years ago," a statement by the Star Entertainment India quoted Khan as saying.

Bachchan had spent nearly three weeks in a hospital in Mumbai, India's financial and entertainment capital, in December after having surgery for an intestinal ailment. He resumed work in Bollywood movies but didn't resume the television program.

The show's organizers approached his son, film star Abhishek Bachchan, to step in but he wasn't available.

source:IHT