A national award winning actor, Atul Kulkarni of Hey Ram, Page 3,Chandani Bar, Rang de Basanti fame has now taken up the challenge of gaining weight challenge for a Marathi Film. Originally weighing 70 kg Atul gains in the film upto 85 kgs for the first half of the film and he reduced 17 kgs for the second half of the film. And all of these in just about three months, 45 days for gaining and 40 days for loosing weight.

Atul Kulkarni is doning all this for the Marathi film, 'Natarang', Zee Talkies first production.'Natarang' is based on a novel by Anand Yadav, Marathi litterateur and President of this year's Marathi Sahitya Sammelan. 'Natarang' is the story of GUNA, a farm worker from the backwad community, who is an amateur wrestler with ultimate dreams of playing the King in the traditional Marathi folk art Tamasha.

Now first half of the film is comleted and Atul is extremely trying hard especially to lose weight with a strict schedule that includes a 12 km run and twice a day gym workout. For the 'Natarang', he has kept himself away from the other projects. From Sepember of the last year Atul is dedicatedly into this project, neither doing other films nor accepting scripts for seven months. He had kept Maniratnam, Vishal Bharadwaj and some other Hindi directors waiting.

Zee Talkies were very sure that only Atul Kulkarni could play Guna; and without him it was just not possible!