Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma, who failed to frighten with "Darna Mana Hai", is hoping to scare the daylights out of audiences with the episodic sequel "Darna Zaroori Hai" that releases Friday.

This time Varma has teamed up with six directors, each of whom will direct a sub-plot, one scarier than the other.

The first one is about a hallucinating professor and his student. It has Amitabh Bachchan and Riteish Deshmukh in the main leads and is directed by Varma himself.

The next revolves around a successful film director, played by Anil Kapoor, who wants to do something different and decides to make a film on ghosts. Apparently, Mallika Sherawat plays a mischievous ghost in the episode that is directed by Jijy Philip, who earlier made "My Wife's Murder" starring Anil and Suchitra Krishnamurthy.

The other spooky tales revolve around a group of kids on a trek, an insurance agent, an unfortunate incident and an overgrown kid.

Varma is not the only filmmaker who has compiled short stories and turned them into a movie.

Last year, journalist-turned-director Samar Khan used the same formula in his debut "Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye" and Khalid Mohammad repeated it in "Silsilay". But none of them could lure audiences and both the films flopped miserably.

As far as the horror genre is concerned, it was categorised as B grade decades ago. The mindset hasn't changed much even today with most audiences preferring to ignore spooky thrillers.

However, this time Varma has roped in big names like Amitabh Bachchan, Riteish Deshmukh, Anil Kapoor, Suneil Shetty, Arjun Rampal and Bipasha Basu to bring in viewers.

Let's see whether the gambit succeeds.