NEW DELHI (Reuters Life!) - Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has issued a lucrative challenge to horror movie fans: a $10,000 reward for anyone who can watch his latest supernatural thriller, alone, in a cinema until the closing credits.

Varma's "Phoonk 2", a sequel to his 2008 film of the same name, is about an evil spirit that traumatises a family.

"Anyone who says the movie cannot scare him is going to be put in a theatre by himself," Varma told reporters in Mumbai at an event to promote the movie.

Varma said the film fan who steps up to the challenge will be wired up to a heart monitoring machine as well as a camera that ensures they keep their eyes open during the whole movie.

Readings from the machines will be shown live on a screen outside the cinema, Varma said, and if the contestant succeeds, they will win 500,000 rupees (approximately $10,850).

Varma issued a similar challenge ahead of the release of the original "Phoonk" but the promotional contest was withdrawn after allegations the selection process was rigged.

Varma said the contest winner ran out 30 minutes after the film started, but newspaper reports said a film fan in the southern Indian city of Bangalore booked an entire cinema to prove the director wrong and watched the film alone with a doctor on call and security personnel stationed outside.

Thank god no one proposed the same challenge for My Name Is Khan. ;-0

i'll take this challenge. RGV i'm in mississauga, Ontario. Pay for me to watch it in india or have a screening for me here. I'll do it for free just to prove u're full of shit. f*** u!

of course i meant


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I read about this contest in NY POST 'weird but true' section. lol wtf?

He's crafty at promoting his stuff. Anyway, looking forward to Raktha Charitra!

What happened to the talented director named Ram Gopal Varma who made classics like Satya and Company?
This, the other Ram Gopal Varma, makes very, very unscary trash horrors. Phoonk was an enjoyable comedy due to it's trashiness, admitted but Agyaat was so lame, so bad, so boring

Strange isn't it, Varma was considered the future of indian quality film once. But guys like Vishal Bhardwaj and Anurag Kashyap, they're on another cinematographic planet than Varma

RGV himself admitted once that any idea which strikes him turns into a film

it could be an incident on the road, a newspaper article, a documentary, a person... anything
this is his ultimate wrongdoing and explains why he made such crap recently like Contract, Phoonk etc

i really think he should stop the following

1) making films on any silly old idea... not everything can be translated into a film
2) making silly statements to grab headlines
3) launching any old idiot and thinking that he's the next Amitabh, Shah Rukh, Aamir, Madhuri, Sridevi etc, examples include Randeep Hooda, Nisha Kothari, Antara Mali, Mohit Ahlawat, Prashant Raj... where are they now, what happened to them, what's his relations with these people now, eh?
4) making gangster and horror movies, he's done too many of them
5) making sequels to his films, Phoonk 2, Sarkar Raj and now he's planning Phoonk 3 (in 3D) and Agyaat 2