Saif Ali Khan has bagged the lead role in the sequel of 1997 comedy blockbuster hit ‘Judwaa’, ‘Judwaa 2’.

The original movie starred Salman Khan and was directed by David Dhawan. But the sequel will be directed by director of ‘Housefull’ fame Sajid Khan and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala.

The director Sajid Khan plans to start shooting for the film in January-February next year (2013).

“I’ll start Judwaa 2 with Saif after wrapping up my next film starring Ajay Devgn,” confirmed the director to a daily.

“Saif and I have known each other for a long time. Actually, we first thought of working together around a year back, but things couldn’t be put together. Now, I am looking forward to teaming up with him. Plus, Nadiad (Sajid Nadiadwala) is like my elder brother,” he added.

The original movie had Salman Khan play the role of long lost twins Prem and Raja. Sajid Khan said that thanks to the technology now-a-days the twins will look authentic. He infact plans on hiring technical experts from Hollywood to play up the duplicity.

“With the help of technology, both the characters will eat, run, turn around and fight in a very realistic manner,” he said.

The movie is still in beginning stages as the writer duo Sajid-Farhad, who have worked on Golmaal and Housefull 2, are still to start working on the screenplay for the movie.

“So, all other details including casting are far from being finalised. At this point, my time is divided between Housefull 2’s post-production work and the story-screenplay of Ajay’s film,” said Sajid Khan.

The director said that the second installment of ‘Housefull 2’ has been more difficult than its first installment.

“This time, I had 21 main actors and 600 junior artistes in the climax. I was going completely crazy. Mithun Chakraborty could see it, so he took me aside and asked me to take it easy,” he said.

The directed insisted that ‘Judwaa 2’ will neither be a sequel nor a remake of the original.