Three debutant directors are on at the marquee this Friday.

Honey Irani, Tigmanshu Dhulia and Gaurab Pandey have a lot in common. Besides being writers-turned-directors, all share a certain passion for taking mainstream Hindi cinema beyond its farcical frontiers. They hope to do so now with Armaan, Haasil and Stumped, all of which open on Friday.

More significantly, Irani, Dhulia and Pandey are all writers who have made their debut films from original, self-written screenplays. At a time when unoriginality has become a hotly debated copyright contest, three original works seem incredibly unexpected.

Dhulia speaks for all three debutants when he says, "Playing it safe was never an option for me. I always wanted my feature film debut to be far removed from the expected. And, with Haasil, I think I've gone beyond conventions."

An astonishingly taut thriller-romance, Haasil takes into its bristling purview a whole lot of themes, including student politics in Uttar Pradesh. Dhulia builds the central romance between his lead pair, Jimmy Shergill and Hrishita Bhatt, without sacrificing the basic tenet of student unrest. Haasil is a film with a remarkable degree of social consciouness and ideological astuteness.

Interestingly, Armaan too is an extremely principled work. Amitabh Bachchan, who stars in it, describes it as a very gracious film. While Dhulia's social consciousness permits him a view into the seamier side of small-town life, Irani sticks to the polished pavement of life.

Armaan is extremely decorous. In telling the story of a dedicated doctor's (Bachchan) unfufilled dream and how it is brought to fruition by his son, played by Anil Kapoor, Irani doesn't make one faltering move.

On the promotional level, Armaan seems to have blundered in projecting excessive sweetness.

Stumped on the other hand hopes to cash in on the sportive spirit in the country. It's got cricket and war as its theme. Says producer Raveena Tandon, "We haven't made a lavish film. But we've made a sincere film that doesn't eye the box office."

The buzz in Mumbai about Armaan is that it's a thanda film. Irani sees that as an advantage. "Audiences will come to the film with nil expectations and go back with a lot more than they had bargained for," she says. The bonuses in her film include the two leading ladies, Preity Zinta and Gracy Singh, who play Anil Kapoor's shrewish wife and benevolent sweetheart, respectively.

The glamour quotient in Dhulia's Haasil is rather low. Disastrously, his lead pair, Jimmy Shergill and Hrishita Bhatt featured in the flop Dil Vil Pyar Vyar last year. Dhulia is counting on the short attention span of the audience to look at the team afresh.

Cast-wise, Honey Irani has a marked edge. Bachchan and Kapoor have never seen on-screen together. To see them as father and son would be a treat for the audiences. But Armaan has no dramatic conflict between the two. And that could put off the average film buff, who would expect a father-son conflict like the one between Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan in Ramesh Sippy's Shakti, with Bachchan moving into the father's role this time.

Haasil, however, definitely has a better dramatic impetus. Dhulia shot the climax at the Kumbh Mela and this is undoubtedly this small film's USP.

But Stumped, with its serio-satirical swipes at the nation's obsession with cricket, could be the surprise winner of the year.

The music of the three films (though extremely hummable in Armaan) hasn't caught on. It would be no exaggeration to say that the audience isn't holding its breath for the films this week.

Despite the low anticipation, the trade, however, is hopeful that one or all three of this week's atypical entertainers will grab the audience's jaded attentions.

Bachchan doesn't need a hit. But the industry sure does.