Believe it or not, but in a way, Rock On!! 2 has managed to find a common connect with Tanu Weds Manu Returns. How, one may ask, considering that they aren’t similar in anything — the genre, cast, storyline, treatment or ambience. Yet there is one connect, and that is around the characters who find themselves in the sane scheme of things all over again in the sequels.
“That’s right,” comments an industry observer, “Rock On!! 2 is one of few films, apart from TWMR, where all the principal characters — R Madhavan, Kangana Ranaut, Deepak Dobriyal, Jimmy Sheirgill, Swara Bhaskar and Eijaz Khan — from the first part, return for the sequel.
When director Aanand L Rai decided to make the sequel, he was sure of bringing them all together once more.”
Producer Farhan Akhtar, too, has ensured that everybody from the film’s band Magik and their wives returned for part 2.
“Farhan, Arjun Rampal and Purab Kohli were in Rock On!! and each of them is back as the band members. The only member who is not there is Luke Kenny and that’s because he died in Part 1. Who knows, he may return in the flashback sequence?” our source wonders.
Prachi Desai and Shahana Goswami (who played the wives of Farhan and Arjun respectively), are back, too. Also, newer characters played by Shraddha Kapoor and Shashank Arora have been introduced.
Now compare this to other major sequels, especially with the ones that feature four or more major characters, and the common trend is to have at least one of them being bumped off.
Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2 is the only film in the history of Bollywood sequels where each of the three leading ladies (Nushrat Bharucha, Sonnalli Seygall and Ishita Raj Sharma) were repeated, while only one leading man, Kartik Aryan remained in both films. In Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar 3, only Amitabh Bachchan has survived.
Let’s wait and watch to see which character returns in Rock On!! 3, if and when it happens!
