Dinesh Vijan's vision: Creating a horror comedy universe in Bollywood

Producer-director Dinesh Vijan is a man with a plan.

Vijan, who last year produced Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor-starrer "Stree", hopes to build cinematic universe in the horror-comedy genre.

After "Stree", the producer on Wednesday announced horror-comedy, "Rooh-Afza", which he will follow-up with "Munjha", another project in the same space.

"There are three horror comedies which are being developed and then they will start meeting (at some point). There will be 'Stree 2', after 'Rooh-Afza' and 'Munjha'.

"After that there will be 'Rooh-Afza 2' and 'Munjha 2'. The sequels will kind of meet each other, just cross paths," Vijan told PTI in an interview.

The producer says while shooting for "Stree", which was one of the major hits of 2018, they started developing "Rooh-Afza", about a singing ghost who puts grooms to sleep on their wedding nights to possess their brides.

He said the third film, "Munjha", will revolve around a male ghost looking for his bride. "Stree" was about a female ghost terrorising the male population of a small town.

"It has been in the planning stage from the last two years. There are three different teams who don't know each other and have developed the three films.

"But I have a blueprint in my mind that I'm going to make all the three films meet. So the last shot of 'Munjha' will meet 'Rooh-Afza' and so on."
"So let's assume 2023 is where all the films should meet. This year will be 'Rooh-Afza', 2020 will be 'Munjha' and 2021 will be 'Stree 2'. Sometime later that year, there will be 'Rooh-Afza 2' and then 2022 will be 'Munjha 2'. Then you do that massive film where all these meet."
"Raj is like 'ghar ka' (a family member). Also they all want to return. Why will you leave your franchise?