Do journalists make competent filmmakers? We may have the answer soon, with a well-known television scribe making the crossover and another from the print media ready with his third film.

Samar Khan, who was STAR Plus' film correspondent for some years, has his first directorial effort "Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye" ready for release this week. For years, Khan judged films and filmmakers, just like Kunal Kohli whose scathing comments on movies had the film trade quaking in anticipation.

Kohli turned director three years ago with Yashraj Films' "Mujhse Dosti Karoge", a slick star-studded love triangle that bombed. He found success in 2004 with "Hum Tum".

Will Khan prove first time lucky? Or will he be rigorously scrutinised by the critics and found to be lacking? We shall soon know.

His film will release a few weeks ahead of another well-known journalist Khalid Mohamed's third film "Silsilay". Mohamed's "Fiza", featuring Hrithik Roshan in his first post-debut release, had got an attentive audience. But the second effort, "Tehzeeb", featuring a dream mother-daughter theme and Shabana Azmi and Urmila Matondkar in the cast, was a critical and commercial failure.

"Silsilay" is an almost all-women film, featuring Tabu (who has all but vanished from sight!), Bhumika Chawla (again, not visible in spite of the success of her maiden Hindi film "Tere Naam"), Celina Jaitley (what happened to her after the high-profile debut in Feroz Khan's "Janasheen"?) and the suddenly coveted Divya Dutta (of "Veer-Zaara" fame).

Mohamed loves to make heroine-oriented films. Both his earlier works were essentially mother-daughter films. In "Silsilay", he makes a departure from his trademark style to examine a gallery of female characters, with Rahul Bose playing the only principal male protagonist.

Interestingly Khan's "Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye" features an ensemble cast of actors who aren't necessarily stars. It's rare for a filmmaker to cast the scene-stealer Arshad Warsi in the main lead.

Mohamed and Khan's products are their USPs, and they both believe it's the film, and not the stars, that sells.

But can they get an audience to watch what they've put on screen? Both "Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaye" and "Silsilay" are products aimed at the more discerning viewer. But would the journalists get a captive audience that they got in their original medium of expression?