Was blown away by Ram Gopal Varma’s generosity in giving us Bhoot title: Karan Johar

Varma had directed Bhoot, featuring Ajay Devgn and Urmila Matondkar in 2003. Almost 17 years later, Johar has backed Bhoot-The Haunted Ship, helmed by Bhanu Pratap Singh. “Bhoot was the correct title for this film but we didn’t have it. I thought ‘at maximum, I’d hear a no from him (Varma) but let me call him’. And I was just blown by his generosity. I called him and I spoke to him and he was like, ‘Yeah, take it and whatever paperwork you willneed, just let me know,’” Johar said.

“It was like in two seconds that he gave me the title. I’ve been in this industry for 25 years but I haven’t seen this kind of generositybefore,” he added.

Bhoot-The Haunted Ship stars Vicky Kaushal in the lead role and Johar said he intends to turn the movie into a franchise.

“Horror is a popular, audience friendly genre. It’s not made much in our Indian cinema. A template for horror films have been created. But our film is pure horror, we haven’t used any song, there’s just one small montage, there’s no titillation. It’s a solid storytelling of a horror film,” he said.

“This is a first of its kind. I am grateful that Vicky headlined the film with us because that gives us a lot of confidence that such films can be made. We want to take this franchise ahead.”

Johar said the trigger for the film was a true incident in 2011 when a ship came out of nowhere at Mumbai’s Juhu beach and was docked for a few days. Bhanu then created a a fictional story around it. Bhoot-The Haunted Ship is scheduled to be released on February 21.