Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who was the target of MNS president Raj Thackeray's anti-North Indian tirade, is all set to produce a Marathi film under his banner A B Corp.

The yet untitled film is in pre-production stage and will be directed by Umesh Kulkarni whose last movie Valu produced by Subhash Ghai received critical and box office acclaim.

Talking to reporters here, Kulkarni, an alumni of FTII said Jaya Bachchan, his senior in the Institute had seen his diploma film Girni. "She liked it very much and we kept in touch. After Valu, we were exploring possibility of working together," he added.

Kulkarni said, "I showed Jayaji, the very first feature film script of my life. She liked it. Myself, Jayaji and A B Corp CEO Wing Commander Ramesh Pulapaka decided that the film should be made in Marathi," he added.

Refusing to divulge more details, Kulkarni said the film is a contemporary story about the spiritual way of looking at life and the protagonist is a 12-year-old boy. "This is not a children's movie," he asserted. Kulkarni said the film will go on floor in August-September this year. The cast of the film is yet to be finalised.

"The shooting will take place in Pune and some other locations in the state," he added. Bachchan's association with Marathi language goes back to the film Akka produced by his long time make up man Deepak Sawant. Amitabh and Jaya made a special appearance in the film during a song sequence of Ganesh arti.

In Mahesh Manjrekar's Virrudh, he played a middle class Maharashtrian man fighting the higher ups to bring his son's killers to book. In Farhan Akhtar's Lakhshya, he played an Army man called Sunil Damle and even mouthed few marathi dialogues.

In Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar and Sarkar Raj, he is playing the character of Subhash Nagre, a Maharashtrian, and even delivered few Marathi dialogues in the film.