Bollywood’s most loved comic franchise, Hera Pheri is back with its third installment. Titled Hera Pheri 3, this one will see Suniel Shetty and Paresh Rawal reprising their legendary roles of Shyam and Baburao Ganpatrao Apte respectively. However, brace yourselves for some disappointment as well. Akshay Kumar, a key figure in the earlier two installments will not be seen in part three. And replacing him are Dostana actors Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham.

At an event yesterday where the announcement was made, the entire cast and crew were in their elements. Paresh Rawal and Suneil Shetty kickstarted the act by donning their Hera Pheri avatars and immediately had the audience in splits with their wisecracks. The duo put up an act where they started searching for Raju (played by Akshay) who is supposed to have disappeared with Baburao’s 1000 rupee note. Soon enough, Abhishek Bachchan entered posing as Raju. As things warmed up on stage with Baburao and Shyaam all set to take on the fraudster Raju, John too appeared and staked his claim of being the ‘real’ Raju. Confusion reigned all over and in the ensuing melee Baburao lost his cool and exploded on both the ‘Rajus’ on stage. The act finished with the trio striking a pose with their three fingers held high for cameras denoting Hera Pheri 3.

While the male crew members of the film have been finalized, the makers are yet to cast female actors. When we asked Abhishek about speculations regarding his mother Jaya Bachchan being cast as his reel mother in the movie, the actor said, “We haven’t cast any heroine yet and will make announcements as soon as we do so.”

Akshay whose career in comedy jumpstarted with this film has been done away because as per the makers, the third installment could have never been made with Akshay character onboard. Said Paresh, “The storyline that has been created revolves around these two Rajus (Abhishek & John) which obviously wouldn’t have been possible with the real Raju (Akshay) around. So it was the demand of the story due to which Akshay is not present in the film.

John, on his part, refused to see this role as yet another attempt of him stepping into Akshay’s shoes. The beefy man expressed happiness at teaming up with the producers of Welcome Back.

Hera Pheri 3 will be written and directed by Neeraj Vora. The film will go on floors tentatively in March this year.