The latest offering from the Bhatt camp, Jannat is a love story based around the issue of Match fixing in cricket.

Starring Emraan Hashmi, he of the kiss-every- miss fame, and Sonal Chauhan, former Femina Miss India and Miss World Tourism, 2005, the movie is set to release on May 16th.

Another novelty is that the movie is to release simultaneously across the border in theatres in Pakistan for the first time.

Emraan Hashmi is quite popular in Pakistan thorough illegal tapes of his movies doing the rounds and his appearances in advertisements on T.V, and print.. Besides the music of Jannat has already circulating in the Pakistani market and is quite popular.

The story of Jannat revolves around a man who is caught in a predicamant of chasing money and sinking in crime as he struggles to find ‘heaven’ (Jannat) on earth. Arjun (Hashmi) is a reckless young man with an obsession for making money at card games. A chance meeting with a girl in a mall, Zoya (Chauhan) gives him the reasons he was looking for to move out of his ordinary life. He steps up from playing a minor card games to becoming a bookie..

Jannat is also a debut for director Kunal Deshmukh. His directorial debut is ready and though Kunal Deshmukh asserts that the intention was not to “clean up the game or spark off controversies”, Jannat could irritate some people in the Cricketing fraternity given that it touches on the match-fixing allegation surrounding Pakistan’s coach Bob Woolmer’s untimely demise.

“We’d been working on the script for a while but it didn’t have a direction. Woolmer’s death tied up the different chunks nicely. It’s the main piece in the puzzle,” acknowledges the film’s 26-year-old director. “But at its core Jannat is a bookie’s love story.”

On real-life parallels with alleged ‘match-fixers’ like Mohammed Azharuddin and Hansie Cronje and Deshmukh says, “You may or may not be reminded of certain people but we haven’t taken names. The idea was not to make a Black Friday.”

The work of Kunal Deshmukh has impressed many who have seen the rushes and the Bhatts are so impressed with the filmmaker that they have already signed him for a three-movie deal for their banner.

Music director Pritam has scored the music for Jannat, which is available on Sony BMG. Singers K K, Kamran Ahmed, Rana Mazumder, Rupam Islam and Richa Sharma have lent their melodious voices to the lyrics penned by Sayeed Quadri and Neelesh Misra. The music has been doing very well.