Jannat 2 may open a can of worms too: Emraan Hashmi

Emraan Hashmi not surprised by recent spot-fixing controversy he’s heard, read and enacted it all before.

Emraan Hashmi has been shooting for the Jannat sequel for a month now and describes it as an Interesting film.

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While Part 1 was an expose on betting in cricket, Part 2 is about illegal trading in arms and ammunition.

“It’s going to be one of the most talked about films of 2012 with superlative performances and a hit music score,” promises the actor whose character, a small-time bookie, Arjun Dixit, gambled his life away in the original, in his quest for heaven.

In 2008, when Jannat released during the Indian Premier League season, spot-fixing was just a speculative whisper, even though the mysterious death of Pakistani coach Bob Woolmer had been the take-off point for the film.

This year, a British daily, News Of The World, grabbed headlines across the world by getting London-based bookie Mazhar Majeed to admit to paying Pakistani cricketers Mohammad Asif, Mohammad Amir and captain Salman Butt to throw away matches during a summer tour of England.

Emraan admits that the expose did not come as a surprise.

“Jannat was well researched and we’d spoken to a lot of cops and mafia operators,” he says, adding that he had also read Fallen Heroes—The Story That Shook The Nation, a book on the spycam-aided investigation conducted by the website www.tehelka.com that caught members of the Indian cricket team accepting bribes on camera.

“What happened recently gave me a sense of déjà vu. It was as if I’d heard, read and enacted all this before.”

He insists that Jannat 2 is another well-researched project and could open a can of worms too. But he’s quick to add that the arms angle is just the wallpaper.

“At heart, it’s an old school romance revolving around a small-town guy who comes to the big city looking for a piece of heaven, falls in love with a girl (former Miss India International Esha Gupta) he would do anything for, and like Arjun, loses himself in the dark underbelly.”