If year 2005 set new standards for Bollywood cinema, the coming year would see Hindi films reaching a higher milestone. Many ambitious projects are in the making for the coming year and the majority of these flicks deal with a variety of subjects that defy the Bollywood stereotype.

Hitting the marquee in the very early months of 2006 would be three big movies — Sanjay Gupta’s ‘Zinda’ featuring Sanjay Dutt and John Abraham, Rakesh Omprakash Mehra’s ‘Rang De Basanti’ with Aamir Khan and the team and Rajkumar Santoshi’s ‘Family - Ties Of Blood’ with the Big B The following months would see a spate of big budget movies from Rakesh Roshan, Karan Johar, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Ramesh Sippy, Subhash Ghai and Ram Gopal Varma.

Hrithik Roshan starrer ‘Krrish’ undoubtedly one of the most awaited films, would most likely hit the theatres in the first half of the year. So would Vidhu Chopra’s ‘Eklavya’ that stars Amitabh and Saif Ali Khan in the leading roles.

Karan Johar, who has been involved more in film production rather than direction for the last few years, will return with his multistarrer directorial venture titled ‘Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna’ with the big and bright stars of Bollywood like Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee, Abhishek Bachchan, Preity Zinta and the Big B, of course. Besides Johar’s movie, SRK would also be seen in Farhaan Akhtar’s ‘Don’.

The year 2006 would also see the return of Kajol to the big screen after a gap of many years ever since she settled down. Kajol will be seen alongside Aamir Khan in Kunal Kohli’s ‘Fanaa.’

If 2005 seemed uneventful for Aishwarya Rai this year would see her hogging the limelight with a good number of movies lined up for release. Her three international projects — ‘Mistress Of Spices’, ‘Provoked’ and ‘The Last Legion’ would release in 2006. Also likely to release is J P Dutta’s ‘Umrao Jaan’ in which she plays a courtesan and poetess.

Salman Khan would pair for the first time with Govinda in David Dhawan’s ‘Partner’ that also stars Katrina Kaif and Lara Dutta. Also releasing would be his romantic flicks ‘Jaaneman’ and ‘Salaam-e-Ishq.’

Sanjay Dutt would be seen reprising his Munnabhai act in Vidhu Chopra’s Munnabhai MBBS sequel that is tentatively titled ‘Munnabhai Meets Mahatma’ which does sound interesting, lets hope for the better.

Another big sequel expected to draw huge crowds is ‘Dhoom 2’ that has Hrithik and Ash in roles with shades of grey. The movie will have Abhishek and Bipasha Basu in the main roles.

2006 would also see Ram Gopal Varma’s remake of classic hit Sholay. And there would also be movies from the likes of Priyadarshan, Nikhil Advani and Mahesh Bhatt. No new faces, no ways. This year Ranbir Kapoor and Sammir Dattani would be the fresh face to look forward to for a change. In short, year 2006 would see broader variety and more experiments in Bollywood films.