The latest offering “JANNAT” from the Mukesh Bhatt & Mahesh Bhatt camp under the banner of Vishesh Films -- essentially a love-story based on the burning issue of match fixing -- to be released by Percept Picture Company is scheduled to storm cinema halls all over India from May 16, 2008.

The film stars Emraan Hashmi and debutant Sonal Chauhan in lead roles while Kunal Deshmukh is wielding the baton in director’s chair for the first time for “JANNAT”.

The story of “JANNAT”, which literally means Paradise or Swarg, revolves around a man who is caught in a quagmire of crime and consumerism as he struggles to find heaven on earth.

Arjun (Emraan Hashmi) is a reckless young man with an obsession for making money at card games. A chance meeting with a girl in a mall, Zoya (Sonal Chauhan) gives him the reasons he (Arjun) was looking for to move out of his ordinary life. He steps up from playing a small-time card games to becoming a bookie.

Stuck in a triangle of sorts between the woman he loves and his addiction to make a quick buck, Arjun moves on from being a bookie to a runner for the mafia. He steps into the world match fixing. Arjun switches on the limelight to bigger, faster, better, more, until his dizzying rise attracts the attention of police. Arjun has now to choose between the love of his life Zoya, and this new found success and power. As Arjun struggles to choose between the two, the Don offers the forbidden apple of limitless wealth in exchange of his soul and draws him into his core entourage of money spinners.

Ace music director Pritam has scored the music for JANNAT which is available on Sony BMG and is already creating a buzz. Singers, K K, Kamran Ahmed , Rana Mazumder, Rupam Islam and Richa Sharma have lent their melodious voices to the lyrics penned by Sayeed Quadri and Neelesh Misra.

The film emphasizes on the tale of a man who is a street-side gambler and turns into a bookie operating at an international platform, the music and lyrics pretty much compliment the protagonist's exciting journey in his quest of JANNAT, as he gets sucked deeper and deeper into the world of cricket and the nexus associated with it.

In an interview, Emraan Hashmi has already cleared any doubts of JANNAT being a Sports film by calling it a love story. “I play an aspirational character in this film, who for the greed of money becomes a bookie.” Emraan also added that he would retain his lover boy image with JANNAT.

The film has been shot extensively in Capetown and Mumbai. The association of Cricket, questions this film to be of sports genre, but Mukesh Bhatt had made it clear in an interview that cricket was only a backdrop of the film and the actuality of the movie is a love story for young couples, with an issue of victims of consumerism.

With their hunt on for a bona fide box office hit, Vishesh Films have all the right reasons to believe in Jannat as their trump card. It makes sense as well considering the fact that the film stars their blue-eyed boy Emraan Hashmi as the central protagonist.

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