How did you like it, Sir?”

All eyes were on Jeetendra who had strolled up to the terrace of his sprawling Krishna bungalow and was an unexpected guest at Ektaa Kapoor’s screening of the promo song of Bhooth Bangla. By then, the media had watched Akshay Kumar’s hyper-energetic Ram ji aake bhala karenge… several times inside Jeetu’s cosy preview theatre. Still, everybody trooped in again but more than the screen, their eyes were on him as he watched his daughter’s product. He was fascinated by the overload of VFX. The special effects of Bhooth Bangla have taken over eight months of production time; double the time Akshay takes to wrap up a film.

If Ravi Kapoor (Jeetendra’s real name) is an unabashed Ektaa admirer, she has reciprocated by giving his name to her son Ravie, with a tweak in the spelling, courtesy her faith in numerology, astrology and all sciences metaphysical. Ektaa keeps track of her seven-year-old’s school routine and knows all about vacation time, which is the right period to bring an entertainer into the theatres.

She has timed Bhooth Bangla for April 10, maintaining a good distance from March 19 when Kannada actor Yash’s multi-language Toxic and Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar: The Revenge, the jumbo nobody wants to take on, will storm the box office. “By April, Dhurandhar would’ve settled down and most schools would’ve begun their holidays,” she explained. Most because IB schools like the one Ravie attends break mid-June onwards.

Interestingly, while Akshay Kumar was playacting an unconvincing legal drama in public last year, even announcing at the Housefull 5 trailer launch that his case with Hera Pheri costar Paresh Rawal was subjudice, the two actors were quietly shooting together with Priyadarshan for Bhooth Bangla, their revenge project against Kartik Aaryan, who hijacked the Bhool Bhulaiyaa (BB) franchise. Bhooth Bangla is positioned as a competitive brand to Bhool Bhulaiyaa. In fact, when Ektaa began working on a horror comedy, she’d thought of calling it something like Vajrasur. Akshay had altered it and offered her the BB-sounding title Bhooth Bangla. With Priyadarshan as director and Akshay, Paresh, the late Asrani and Rajpal Yadav in the cast, it’s almost as if the Bhool Bhulaiyaa of 2007 has moved house and settled down in a Bhooth Bangla. It also stars Tabu and Wamiqa Gabbi.

Revenge is sweet and calculated. It’s not called the Ides of March for nothing. Expect an energetic campaign from mid-March, the promo number released last week giving only a glimpse of Akshay’s vitality as he strains every nerve and sinew in the 2-minute song with a few bhoots and lots of bhootnis.

The amusing part came when younger media people got a tad patronising with Jeetendra and began to explain that Bhooth Bangla hovered around the same ground as a film called Bhool Bhulaiyaa. But 83-year-old Jeetendra, who has the waistline of a teenager and steps out only with carefully applied makeup, knew much more about the 2007 film than anybody else in the room. When he referred to the Malayalam film, which was remade into Bhool Bhulaiyaa followed by a big-star Tamil version, all the youngsters had to Google to know that the original had indeed come from Keralam and had starred Mohanlal while Rajinikanth had powered Chandramukhi in Tamil.

With his alcohol-free vegetarian lifestyle and discipline of over two decades, Jeetendra has stayed mentally agile. The only one who can match his sharpness is perhaps Amitabh Bachchan, who’s all set to return with yet another edition of Kaun Banega Crorepati.

A day prior to Ektaa’s screening, 69-year-old Anil Kapoor had promoted his new Amazon film Subedaar and had basked in the attention he received for his professional longevity. Bhooth Bangla was all about 69-year-old Priyadarshan’s comeback to Hindi cinema and the welcome appearance of Jeetendra.

At every turn, senior citizens ruled the week.