After changing Vidya Balan's picture perfect image in 'The Dirty Picture', director Milan Luthria is planning to explore the dark, subtle side of Akshay Kumar in his much anticipated sequel of 'Once Upon a Time In Mumbaai'

The director, who loves to cast his actors against their popular image, is looking forward to score a hattrick with the film, which begins shooting in July.

"The whole idea is to pick up a challenge. I want to catch the certain dark, emotional and subtle style of Akshay which I feel has not been explored much. When you present such a big star in a different way it adds a lot of intrigue for his fans," Luthria said.

The director says that though he takes inspiration from the era when gangsters ruled Mumbai, his film is not about Dawood Ibrahim or Chhota Shakeel. "I would not call it a gangster film at all. It is about people from underworld who have high sense of drama and lead high voltage life.

It is actually more of a love triangle in the tradition of 'Muqaddar Ka Sikandar'. What I am trying to do is to recreate an era where gangsters had gangster friends. Some of these friendships did not turn out well. They also had this fascination for Bollywood actresses and courted them."

Luthria grew up watching the cinema of the '70s which he feels has contributed a lot to his style of moviemaking, "which has larger than life quality and where heroes speak the language of flamboyance and drama."

The flamboyant style was quite visible in his last two hits 'Once Upon a Time In Mumbaai' and 'The Dirty Picture', which earned Vidya Balan her first National award. Luthria too counts it among his best films.

"This movie was trully a turning point. It had a cosmic quality to it and I think we had a stroke of genius when we cast Vidya to play Silk. I was often accused of doing male dominated films by my friends but I did not want to make a sob story. This particular story was perfect and I am still surprised that we managed to pull off something so daring."