Karan Johar dropped a surprise announcement on June 10, when he announced his new production to release in 2019. Titled Bhoot Part One - The Haunted Ship, the movie has Vicky Kaushal and Bhumi Pednekar in the lead. As the name suggests, Bhoot is a horror movie, sharing its name with the Ram Gopal Varma classic from 2003. KJo's banner, Dharma Productions, shared the first poster of the movie, that has Vicky Kaushal peer through a broken porthole of a ship, with a demonic hand around his neck. Bhoot-Part One: The Haunted Ship: Vicky Kaushal's Spine-Chilling Look Will Impress the Horror Movie Lover in You (View Pic).

Bhoot Part One - The Haunted Ship marks an interesting subversion into the supernatural for Karan Johar as a producer. Most of his productions belong to the genre of romance or drama or romantic dramas. However, there have been occasional forays into other genres, like last year's Simmba, starring Ranveer Singh, that was a masala action entertainer. Or Ittefaq, that was a murder-mystery.

That said, Bhoot Part One - The Haunted Ship is NOT Dharma Productions' first venture into the genre of horror. That credit belongs to the 2005 film, Kaal (co-produced with Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment).

Directed by Sohum Shah, Kaal was a multi-starrer with Ajay Devgn, Vivek Oberoi, John Abraham, Lara Dutta and Esha Deol in the lead. Though it had the theme of tiger conservation woven in its narrative, tigers hardly had much to do in the movie. Instead, Kaal was more of a Final Destination-kind of a horror movie, where a spirit kills off each member of a group in ingenious ways, who finds themselves trapped in a forest.

Kaal's supernatural theme, its starcast and the presence of tigers got the film quite the attention pre-release, along with Shah Rukh Khan and Malaika Arora's special song 'Kaal Dhamaal'.

At the box office, though, the movie was an average performer, with the film being criticised for being too influenced by Hollywood. Ajay Devgn, who interestingly was also the lead in RGV's Bhoot, got out unscathed, as he got the maximum praise for his performance. Recently during Koffee With Karan 6, Ajay even joked about the movie's failure, despite beginning with the letter "K".

With Karan Johar returning to the genre of horror with Bhoot Part One - The Haunted Ship, here's hoping that he finds better luck at the box office second time around. Bhoot: Part One - The Haunted Ship is directed by Bhanu Pratap Singh and is scheduled to release on November 15, 2019.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 10, 2019 09:23 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).