After an action-packed 2023, Bollywood's New Year promises flurry of surprises

Mumbai, Jan 1

After the hype and hoopla over the quartet of 'Pathaan', 'Jawan', 'Gadar 2' and 'Animal' that defined the Hindi film market in the year passing by, expect a lineup of big-bang surprises in 2024.

The coming year's pipeline includes Ajay Devgn's 'Singham Again', Hrithik Roshan's 'Fighter' (with Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor, directed by Siddharth Raj Anand, but not for the YRF spy universe), Akshay Kumar and Tiger Shroff's 'Bade Miyan Chote Miyan', 'Jigra' headlined by Alia Bhatt, and ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ (featuring Akshay yet again).

Akshay, incidentally, is returning to his favourite action-comedy genre. Enough of 'cause' films, he must be telling himself!

And of course, it will be a year of the big-bang apocalyptic film, Nag Ashwin's pan-India film 'Kalki 2898 AD', whose stellar lineup is topped up by Prabhas, Deepika Padukone, Kamal Haasan, Dulquer Salman and Amitabh Bachchan.

When 'Kalki' was teased earlier this year at Comic Con, it created quite a buzz and raised expectations.

The sweet surprise of the year will be Shah Rukh Khan's appearance with daughter Suhana in an untitled murder mystery film helmed by Sujoy Ghosh.

2024 will see a couple of much-anticipated women-centric films as well, including Tabu, Kareen Kapoor and Kriti Sanon's 'The Crew' and Kajol-starrer 'Do Patti'.

Kareena will also be seen in 'The Buckingham Murders', a Hansal Mehta film centred shot in London and centred around a British-Indian detective.

And, appropriately for a year that will see the country going to vote for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Hindi film audiences will get to see the biopic of the popular prime minister, Atal Bihar Vajpayee, reprised by Pankaj Tripathi.

Another politically loaded film will be Kangana Ranaut's passion project, 'The Emergency', with the actress, who has not had a great run at the box office, plays Indira Gandhi.