With the success of Na Maloom Afraad (NMA), Pakistani audience is now hooked on entertainment movies. And director Kamran Akbar Khan’s "commercial comedy" film Halla Gulla will soon be heading that way.

Speaking to Dawn about the film, Khan said the team started working on the project in September and plans to release it in March or April next year.

“We basically plan to release the film after the ICC World Cup next year and we have completed 75 per cent of the work,” said Khan.

He stressed that though Halla Gulla is also a comedy film, it is not a sequel to NMA.

“Nabeel Qureshi’s NMA was indeed a wonderful film, but Halla Gulla and NMA are poles apart," explains Khan. While NMA focused on all aspects of Karachi, especially its everyday problems, Halla Gulla only shows the posh parts of Karachi — the neat and clean side."

Khan further shared: "Halla Gulla will have at least five songs, which shows that it is a commercial comedy— one of which, "Ishq Kamla", has been released. There is one item song and one club song along with others.”

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The cast of the film includes veteran actors Javed Sheikh, Ismail Tara, Ghazal Javed, Ashraf Khan and Adil Wadia along with some relatively new faces, including Asim Mehmood, Sidra Batool, Muneeb and Maryam Ansari among others.

“I think the reason people are drawing parallels with NMA is that it also has Javed Sheikh sahib and the genre is also not a serious one but I assure you that they are not similar. Hulla Gulla will be a total comedy and a family entertainment film,” said Khan.

Though he didn’t disclose the story, Khan said Javed Sheikh will be playing the role of a don and Asim Mehmood will be playing his son.

“Like Indian films Golmal or Housefull do not follow stories and are more concerned with a chain of events, Halla Gulla will also have a similar take,” Khan said.

Giving an insight about the music score, Khan revealed that the songs have been sung by Indian singers Mika Singh and Sunidhi Chauhan.

“Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has also lent his voice for a song and we are in talks with [Bollywood playback singer] Sukhwinder about another one.”