Akshay, Emraan team up for the first time in Selfiee

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Dharma Productions, Prithviraj Productions, Magic Frames and Cape of Good Films announce Selfiee, starring Akshay Kumar and Emraan Hashmi for the first time. The title, interestingly, is not a typo: it’s numerology!

South superstar and producer, Prithviraj Sukumaran, along with Magic Frames, who are marking their Hindi cinema debut, and Cape of Good Films (Akshay’s home banner) are set to tap into a drama-comedy with this remake of the Malayalam blockbuster Driving Licence.

Akshay put in some selfies on his Instagram to match the film’s title, with Emraan in one of them. “Kick-starting my day with a selfie! Because why not?” was his apt caption.

Selfiee, directed by Raj Mehta and produced by (late) Aruna Bhatia (Akshay’s mother), Hiroo Yash Johar, Karan Johar, Prithviraj Sukumaran, Apoorva Mehta, Supriya Menon and Listin Stephen (these two names also co-produced the Malayalam original) will hit cinemas in 2022 itself. The principal photography begins soon.

It will be remembered that the director, who made his debut in late 2019 with another Dharma-Akshay Kumar film, the hit Good Newwz, also used an English title with an extra letter! And his new film, also for Dharma, the now-complete Jug Jugg Jeeyo, starring Anil Kapoor, Neetu Singh, Varun Dhawan and Kiara Advani has—guess what?—an extra ‘g’ in the second word.

Emraan Hashmi, now almost two decades old in films, is a survivor! Having started out with the 2003 Footpath and given many solo hero hits, Hashmi has, of late, done films where he has been in a parallel lead with bigger names like Rishi Kapoor (The Body), Amitabh Bachchan (Chehre) and John Abraham (Mumbai Saga), besides Salman Khan (in the forthcoming Tiger 3) and Ajay Devgn (in the past). He made his web debut with Shah Rukh Khan’s production, Bard of Blood. For good measure, Emraan has featured in the international film, Tigers.

In the mid-2000s to early 2010s, he was a box-office force to reckon with in Hindi cinema after films like Murder, Zeher, Kalyug, Gangster, Aashiq Banaya Aapne, Aksar, Jannat, Once Upon A Time in Mumbai, The Dirty Picture and others. The ‘lucky’ phase ended with Raaz 3 (2012).

Prithviraj Sukumaran, the Malayalam star who has done a couple of Hindi movies, had featured in and produced the original Driving Licence, which told a comic-cum-dramatic tale of a fan who is a motor vehicle inspector, who agrees to get his star idol a quick driving license illegally, leading to complications for both. Prithviraj had played the star, the role now played by Akshay.

Akshay, of course, is top gun now in Hindi cinema, and his films with Johar, a list that began with Brothers in 2015, now include Kesari, Good Newwz, Sooryavanshi (all Akshay’s home productions as well) and his cameo in Simmba. Johar also presented 2.0, which featured Rajanikanth as well.