Sunny Deol's career is going through a rough patch. With the actor's latest release Teesri Aankh failing to create a stir at the box office, he is all set to bounce back with the plum role of a serial killer in Dus director Anubhav Sinha's next.

"We have not had too many Hindi films on serial killers except for Red Rose, which had Rajesh Khanna in the lead. I find the process of getting into a killer's mind very interesting," says the filmmaker. "When I approached Sunny for a positive role in the film tentatively titled Pancham, he was more keen to play the serial killer. It proves how stars constantly want to change tracks."

The film with 'lots of music' will be launched shortly.

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To describe Sinha's rise meteoric would be no exaggeration. He rose from being the director of the small-budget Tum Bin [Images] to being the maker of Dus. "I have come a long way," he says, modestly. "But the going has not been easy. Though Dus was a hit, and raked in Rs 5,00,00,000 in Mumbai alone, the box office wrote it off as a mere commission earner. How can someone do that? Salman (Khan) told me I was an idiot to have made Tum Bin with small stars."

Anubhav has learnt from his mistakes. Besides Pancham, he has three other films with big stars lined up. "I will start off with a caper thriller called Cash, with Ajay Devgan [Images] and Zayed Khan [Images], in June. It's a commitment I made to producer Sahail Lakhani even before the release of Dus. I was given just Rs 786 as the signing amount for Cash."

He adds, "All my films will have big names but they won't be multi-starrers. I have taken a cue from Amol Palekar's Paheli [Images]. It had big stars playing definite characters."

After that, he plans to make Gyarah, a sequel to Dus. That will be followed by a film for children. "It won't talk down to them. It will be a huge film, with a budget even bigger than Dus."