Before the teaser of actress Kangana Ranaut's Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi (2019) is revealed on 15 August 2018, the release date of the film has finally been confirmed. The film on the life of Rani Laxmibai will be released on 25 January 2019 alongside the films Super 30 and Cheat India. The biopic on Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray is due to be released a few days earlier on 23 January, for Thackeray's 92nd birth anniversary.
Directed by Krish and written by KV Vijayendra Prasad, the period film Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi has seen many delays. The film was initially supposed to be released this April but got postponed. Earlier this year, a religious group tried to derail the film saying it will try to distort history. Ranaut plays Rani Laxmibai, while the rest of the cast includes Sonu Sood, Ankita Lokhande, Jisshu Sengupta and Nihaar Pandya.
Ranaut will have had no film release in 2018 with the delayed release of Manikarnika. But it is more than a marked coincidence that the film will clash with Hrithik Roshan's next film, Super 30. The former co-stars had a public falling out as personal details about their private life became public and they both filed suits and countersuits against each other.
Last year, Kaabil (2017), produced by Rakesh Roshan and starring Hrithik, was also released on 25 January 2017 and clashed with Shah Rukh Khan's Raaes (2017).
In Super 30, directed by Vikas Bahl, the actor will play mathematician Anand Kumar who selects 30 deserving children from poor backgrounds to train them for the JEE, the entrance examination for Indian Institutes of Technology in the country.
Emraan Hashmi's Cheat India, directed by Soumik Sen, will explore the corrupt and seamier side of the Indian education system where people resort to crime to get the results they desire.
The Republic Day weekend in 2019 will definitely present audiences with an array of choices.