title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Official images of the film were released on August 31, 2021, and were met with a mixed response. A trailer was released on October 7, 2021, and was met with mixed reaction from fans, who praised its faithfulness to the first two games, but criticized its casting and special effects. Prior to the film's release, the characters were criticized by "Metro" based on the film's trailer, who called them "bad cosplay" and further said that their acting was "too authentic to the games". Summarizing the film's marketing results, RelishMix said fans of the franchise noticed Milla Jovovich absence while "questioning the logic, the look of the effects, and comparing the film to the game's CGI."


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" had its world premiere at the Grand Rex in Paris, France on November 19, 2021, but was theatrically released on November 24, 2021, by Sony Pictures Releasing in the United States. It was delayed from its original release dates of September 3 and 9, 2021. The film was a modest financial success.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" was released on video-on-demand on December 21, 2021, and was the top-rented film on Vudu during its first weekend. The film was released on DVD, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray on February 8, 2022 by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film grossed over $3.4 million from North America video sales.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: "Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" grossed $17 million in the United States and Canada, and $25 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $42 million.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside "House of Gucci" and "Encanto", and was projected to gross $8–10 million from 2,803 theaters over its five-day opening weekend. The film opened nationwide on Wednesday, November 24, 2021, and made $2.5 million on its first day—including $935,000 from Tuesday night previews—from a total of 225,000 theater admissions. The film went on to make $8.85 million in its first five days, placing fifth. Audiences were 64% male as well as 68% between the ages of 18 and 34. In its second weekend, the film earned $2.69 million. In its third, the film made $1.66 million and finished sixth at the box office. The film was tenth in its fourth weekend, earning $316,480 from 719 theaters.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Outside the U.S. and Canada, the film earned $5.1 million from 15 markets in its opening weekend. It made $4.2 million in its second weekend and $2.3 million in its third. In Thailand, the film earned $253,735 from the box office. Japan was the film's highest-grossing foreign market, contributing $5.1 million from the box office.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 30% based on 87 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City" is an affectionately faithful adaptation that further proves its source material is ill-suited to the big screen." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it a 61% positive score, with 48% saying they would definitely recommend it.


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: In a positive review, Johnny Oleksinski from the "New York Post" gave 3 out of 4 stars and said the film is "empty-headed good fun that’s blessedly under two hours and has just enough character development to make you kind of care when someone gets bitten." Ferdosa Abdi from "ScreenRant" called it a "fun and faithful adaptation of the games", but felt it was "lacking in character substance." Sean Kane from "CNET" praised the film: "Despite the lack of scares, minor tweaks to the games' lore and overall silliness, director Johannes Roberts' love for "Resident Evil" is clear in every moment of "Welcome to Raccoon City". With a barrage of Easter eggs and fascinating takes on classic characters, the film's a gleeful trip back to the Spencer Mansion and Raccoon Police Department aimed squarely at fans."


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Taylor Lyles of "IGN" gave the film a 6/10 score, explaining, "Director Mr. Roberts does deserve some credit for sticking much more closely to the source material than the Paul W. S. Anderson films, but a short runtime, a rushed third act, and lack of elements to make it truly scary to watch in the dark hold it back immensely. Nevertheless, it should serve as decent fun for fans". In a mixed review, Mark Hanson from "SLANT" wrote "Roberts clearly establishes the hauntingly depressed industrial environment of Raccoon City while methodically spacing out his zombie attacks, which, while not especially innovative, at times put a pit in your stomach like the "Resident Evil" games do."


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Charles Bramesco from "The A.V. Club" gave a C+ and called it "totally bereft of the visual distinction or creative personality that often made its predecessors intriguing diamonds in the rough". Nick Schager from "Variety" criticized the "bevy of unexplained details, dropped subplots, paper-thin characterizations and fright-free mayhem." Kimberly Myers from the "Los Angeles Times" also gave a negative review, noting the film "may reward longtime fans of the video games by returning to the series' origins, but others will find themselves wanting to leave town, much like the movie's characters."


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Director Johannes Roberts stated that if a sequel were to be developed, he would like to adapt the story from "" and then "Resident Evil 4":


title: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

text: Roberts also expressed interest in adapting "" and "Resident Evil Village" in the future: Robbie Amell stated he hoped to return as Chris in a sequel that included his boulder-punching scene from "Resident Evil 5". By June 2022, Tom Hopper confirmed Sony and Constantin Films were pleased with the film's success on video-on-demand and said he hoped to play Albert Wesker again in the future.


title: South Asia

text: South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and defined largely by the Indian Ocean on the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir mountains on the north. The Amu Darya, which rises north of the Hindu Kush, forms part of the northwestern border. On land (clockwise), South Asia is bounded by Western Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.


title: South Asia

text: The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is an economic cooperation organization in the region which was established in 1985 and includes all eight nations comprising South Asia. South Asia covers about , which is 11.71% of the Asian continent or 3.5% of the world's land surface area. The population of South Asia is about 1.9 billion or about one-fourth of the world's population, making it both the most populous and the most densely populated geographical region in the world.


title: South Asia

text: In 2010, South Asia had the world's largest populations of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and Zoroastrians. South Asia alone accounts for 98.47% of Hindus, 90.5% of Sikhs, and 31% of Muslims worldwide, as well as 35 million Christians and 25 million Buddhists.


title: South Asia

text: Modern definitions of South Asia are consistent in including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka as the constituent countries. Afghanistan is, however, considered by some to be a part of Central Asia, Western Asia, or the Middle East. After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, it was a British protectorate until 1919. On the other hand, Myanmar (Burma), administered as a part of the British Raj between 1886 and 1937 and now largely considered a part of Southeast Asia as a member state of ASEAN, is also sometimes included. But the Aden Colony, British Somaliland and Singapore, though administered at various times under the British Raj, have never been proposed as any part of South Asia. The region may also include the disputed territory of Aksai Chin, which was part of the British Indian princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, now administered as part of the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang but also claimed by India.


title: South Asia

text: The geographical extent is not clear cut as systemic and foreign policy orientations of its constituents are quite asymmetrical. Beyond the core territories of the British Raj or the British Indian Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. There is no clear boundary – geographical, geopolitical, socio-cultural, economical or historical – between South Asia and other parts of Asia, especially the Middle East and Southeast Asia.


title: South Asia

text: The common definition of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the British Raj, with several exceptions. The current territories of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan which were the core territories of the British Empire from 1857 to 1947 also form the core territories of South Asia. The mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, two independent countries that were not part of the British Raj, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and Maldives are generally included. By various definitions based on substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory and the Tibet Autonomous Region are included as well. The 562 princely states that were protected by but not directly ruled by the British Raj became administrative parts of South Asia upon joining India or Pakistan.


title: South Asia

text: The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), a contiguous block of countries, started in 1985 with seven countriesBangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lankaand admitted Afghanistan as an eighth member in 2007. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of full members of SAARC. The South Asia Free Trade Agreement admitted Afghanistan in 2011.


title: South Asia

text: The World Bank and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recognizes the eight SAARC countries as South Asia, The Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region excludes Afghanistan from South Asia. Population Information Network (POPIN) excludes Maldives which is included as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network. The United Nations Statistics Division's scheme of sub-regions, for statistical purpose, includes Iran along with all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia.


title: South Asia

text: The boundaries of South Asia vary based on how the region is defined. South Asia's northern, eastern, and western boundaries vary based on definitions used, while the Indian Ocean is the southern periphery. Most of this region rests on the Indian Plate and is isolated from the rest of Asia by mountain barriers. Much of the region consists of a peninsula in south-central Asia, rather resembling a diamond which is delineated by the Himalayas on the north, the Hindu Kush in the west, and the Arakanese in the east, and which extends southward into the Indian Ocean with the Arabian Sea to the southwest and the Bay of Bengal to the southeast.


title: South Asia

text: The terms "Indian subcontinent" and "South Asia" are sometimes used interchangeably. The Indian subcontinent is largely a geological term referring to the land mass that drifted northeastwards from ancient Gondwana, colliding with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Palaeocene. This geological region largely includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Historians Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot state that the term "Indian subcontinent" describes a natural physical landmass in South Asia that has been relatively isolated from the rest of Eurasia.


title: South Asia

text: The use of the term Indian subcontinent began in the British Empire, and has been a term particularly common in its successors. South Asia as the preferred term is particularly common when scholars or officials seek to differentiate this region from East Asia. According to historians Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, the Indian subcontinent has come to be known as South Asia "in more recent and neutral parlance." This "neutral" notion refers to the concerns of Pakistan and Bangladesh, particularly given the recurring conflicts between India and Pakistan, wherein the dominant placement of "India" as a prefix before the subcontinent might offend some political sentiments. However, in Pakistan, the term "South Asia" is considered too India-centric and was banned until 1989 after the death of Zia ul Haq. This region has also been labelled as "India" (in its classical and pre-modern sense) and "Greater India".


title: South Asia

text: According to Robert M. Cutler – a scholar of Political Science at Carleton University, the terms South Asia, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia are distinct, but the confusion and disagreements have arisen due to the geopolitical movement to enlarge these regions into Greater South Asia, Greater Southwest Asia, and Greater Central Asia. The frontier of Greater South Asia, states Cutler, between 2001 and 2006 has been geopolitically extended to eastern Iran and western Afghanistan in the west, and in the north to northeastern Iran, northern Afghanistan, and southern Uzbekistan.


title: South Asia

text: Identification with a South Asian identity was found to be significantly low among respondents in an older two-year survey across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.


title: South Asia

text: The history of core South Asia begins with evidence of human activity of "Homo sapiens," as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including "Homo erectus" from about 500,000 years ago. The earliest prehistoric culture have roots in the mesolithic sites as evidenced by the rock paintings of Bhimbetka rock shelters dating to a period of 30,000 BCE or older, as well as neolithic times.


title: South Asia

text: The Indus Valley civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of South Asia from c. 3300 to 1300 BCE in present-day Northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, was the first major civilization in South Asia. A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture developed in the Mature Harappan period, from 2600 to 1900 BCE. According to anthropologist Possehl, the Indus Valley civilization provides a logical, if somewhat arbitrary, starting point for South Asian religions, but these links from the Indus religion to later-day South Asian traditions are subject to scholarly dispute.


title: South Asia

text: The Vedic period, named after the Vedic religion of the Indo-Aryans, lasted from c. 1900 to 500 BCE. The Indo-Aryans were Indo-European pastoralists who migrated into north-western India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization, Linguistic and archaeological data show a cultural change after 1500 BCE, with the linguistic and religious data clearly showing links with Indo-European languages and religion. By about 1200 BCE, the Vedic culture and agrarian lifestyle was established in the northwest and northern Gangetic plain of South Asia. Rudimentary state-forms appeared, of which the Kuru-Pañcāla union was the most influential. The first recorded state-level society in South Asia existed around 1000 BCE. In this period, states Samuel, emerged the Brahmana and Aranyaka layers of Vedic texts, which merged into the earliest Upanishads. These texts began to ask the meaning of a ritual, adding increasing levels of philosophical and metaphysical speculation, or "Hindu synthesis".


title: South Asia

text: Increasing urbanisation of India between 800 and 400 BCE, and possibly the spread of urban diseases, contributed to the rise of ascetic movements and of new ideas which challenged the orthodox Brahmanism. These ideas led to Sramana movements, of which Mahavira (c. 549–477 BCE), proponent of Jainism, and Buddha (c. 563–483), founder of Buddhism, were the most prominent icons.


title: South Asia

text: The Greek army led by Alexander the Great stayed in the Hindu Kush region of South Asia for several years and then later moved into the Indus valley region. Later, the Maurya Empire extended over much of South Asia in the 3rd century BCE. Buddhism spread beyond south Asia, through northwest into Central Asia. The Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan and the edicts of Aśoka suggest that the Buddhist monks spread Buddhism (Dharma) in eastern provinces of the Seleucid Empire, and possibly even farther into Western Asia. The Theravada school spread south from India in the 3rd century BCE, to Sri Lanka, later to Southeast Asia. Buddhism, by the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE, was prominent in the Himalayan region, Gandhara, Hindu Kush region and Bactria.


title: South Asia

text: From about 500 BCE through about 300 CE, the Vedic-Brahmanic synthesis or "Hindu synthesis" continued. Classical Hindu and Sramanic (particularly Buddhist) ideas spread within South Asia, as well outside South Asia. The Gupta Empire ruled over a large part of the region between 4th and 7th centuries, a period that saw the construction of major temples, monasteries and universities such as the Nalanda. During this era, and through the 10th century, numerous cave monasteries and temples such as the Ajanta Caves, Badami cave temples and Ellora Caves were built in South Asia.


title: South Asia

text: Islam came as a political power in the fringe of South Asia in 8th century CE when the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh, and Multan in Southern Punjab, in modern-day Pakistan. By 962 CE, Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms in South Asia were under a wave of raids from Muslim armies from Central Asia. Among them was Mahmud of Ghazni, who raided and plundered kingdoms in north India from east of the Indus river to west of Yamuna river seventeen times between 997 and 1030. Mahmud of Ghazni raided the treasuries but retracted each time, only extending Islamic rule into western Punjab.


title: South Asia

text: The wave of raids on north Indian and western Indian kingdoms by Muslim warlords continued after Mahmud of Ghazni, plundering and looting these kingdoms. The raids did not establish or extend permanent boundaries of their Islamic kingdoms. The Ghurid Sultan Mu'izz al-Din Muhammad began a systematic war of expansion into North India in 1173. He sought to carve out a principality for himself by expanding the Islamic world. Mu'izz sought a Sunni Islamic kingdom of his own extending east of the Indus river, and he thus laid the foundation for the Muslim kingdom that became the Delhi Sultanate. Some historians chronicle the Delhi Sultanate from 1192 due to the presence and geographical claims of Mu'izz al-Din in South Asia by that time.


title: South Asia

text: The Delhi Sultanate covered varying parts of South Asia and was ruled by a series of dynasties, called Mamluk, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid and Lodi dynasties. Muhammad bin Tughlaq came to power in 1325, launched a war of expansion and the Delhi Sultanate reached it largest geographical reach over the South Asian region during his 26-year rule. A Sunni Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlaq persecuted non-Muslims such as Hindus, as well as non-Sunni Muslims such as Shia and Mahdi sects.


title: South Asia

text: Revolts against the Delhi Sultanate sprang up in many parts of South Asia during the 14th century. After the death of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, the Bengal Sultanate came to power in 1352 CE, as the Delhi Sultanate began disintegrating. The Bengal Sultanate remained in power through the early 16th century. It was reconquered by the armies of the Mughal Empire. The state religion of the Bengal Sultanate was Islam, and the region under its rule, a region that ultimately emerged as the modern nation of Bangladesh, saw a growth of a syncretic form of Islam. In the Deccan region, the Hindu kingdom Vijayanagara Empire came to power in 1336 and remained in power through the 16th century, after which it too was reconquered and absorbed into the Mughal Empire.


title: South Asia

text: About 1526, the Punjab governor Dawlat Khan Lodī reached out to the Mughal Babur and invited him to attack Delhi Sultanate. Babur defeated and killed Ibrahim Lodi in the Battle of Panipat in 1526. The death of Ibrahim Lodi ended the Delhi Sultanate, and the Mughal Empire replaced it.


title: South Asia

text: The modern history period of South Asia, that is 16th-century onwards, witnessed the start of the Central Asian dynasty named the Mughals, with Turkish-Mongol roots and Sunni Islam theology. The first ruler was Babur, whose empire extended the northwest and Indo-Gangetic Plain regions of South Asia. The Deccan and northeastern region of South Asia was largely under Hindu kings such as those of Vijayanagara Empire and Ahom kingdom, with some regions such as parts of modern Telangana and Andhra Pradesh under local Sultanates such as the Shia Islamic rulers of Golconda Sultanate.


title: South Asia

text: The Mughal Empire continued its wars of expansion after Babur's death. With the fall of the Rajput kingdoms and Vijayanagara, its boundaries encompassed almost the entirety of the Indian subcontinent. The Mughal Empire was marked by a period of artistic exchanges and a Central Asian and South Asian architecture synthesis, with remarkable buildings such as the Taj Mahal. At its height, the empire was the world's largest economy, worth almost 25% of global GDP, more than the entirety of Western Europe.


title: South Asia

text: However, this time also marked an extended period of religious persecution. Two of the religious leaders of Sikhism, Guru Arjan and Guru Tegh Bahadur were arrested under orders of the Mughal emperors and were asked to convert to Islam, and were executed when they refused. Religious taxes on non-Muslims called "jizya" were imposed. Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh temples were desecrated. However, not all Muslim rulers persecuted non-Muslims. Akbar, a Mughal ruler for example, sought religious tolerance and abolished jizya.


title: South Asia

text: In Aurangzeb's time, almost all of South Asia was claimed by the Mughal Empire. Under Aurangzeb's rule, South Asia reached its zenith, becoming the world's largest economy and biggest manufacturing power, estimated over 25% of world GDP, a value higher than China's and entire Western Europe's one.


title: South Asia

text: After the death of Aurangzeb and the collapse of the Mughal Empire, which marks the beginning of modern India, in the early 18th century, it provided opportunities for the Marathas, Sikhs, Mysoreans and Nawabs of Bengal to exercise control over large regions of the Indian subcontinent. By the mid-18th century, India was a major proto-industrializing region.


title: South Asia

text: Maritime trading between South Asia and European merchants began after the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama returned to Europe. British, French, Portuguese colonial interests struck treaties with these rulers and established their trading ports. In northwest South Asia, a large region was consolidated into the Sikh Empire by Ranjit Singh. After the defeat of the Nawab of Bengal and Tipu Sultan and his French allies, the British Empire expanded their interests until the Hindu Kush region.


title: South Asia

text: In 1905, the Government of India initiated the partition of Bengal, a decision which was eventually reversed after Indian opposition. However, during the partition of India, Bengal was partitioned into East Bengal (Pakistan) and West Bengal (India). East Bengal became the People's Republic of Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971.


title: South Asia

text: According to Saul Cohen, early colonial era strategists treated South Asia with East Asia, but in reality, the South Asia region excluding Afghanistan is a distinct geopolitical region separated from other nearby geostrategic realms, one that is geographically diverse. The region is home to a variety of geographical features, such as glaciers, rainforests, valleys, deserts, and grasslands that are typical of much larger continents. It is surrounded by three water bodiesthe Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Seaand has acutely varied climate zones. The tip of the Indian Peninsula had the highest quality pearls.


title: South Asia

text: Most of this region is resting on the Indian Plate, the northerly portion of the Indo-Australian Plate, separated from the rest of the Eurasian Plate. The Indian Plate includes most of South Asia, forming a land mass which extends from the Himalayas into a portion of the basin under the Indian Ocean, including parts of South China and Eastern Indonesia, as well as Kunlun and Karakoram ranges, and extending up to but not including Ladakh, Kohistan, the Hindu Kush range, and Balochistan. It may be noted that geophysically the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet is situated at the outside of the border of the regional structure, while the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan are situated inside that border.


title: South Asia

text: The Indian subcontinent formerly formed part of the supercontinent Gondwana, before rifting away during the Cretaceous period and colliding with the Eurasian Plate about 50–55 million years ago and giving birth to the Himalayan range and the Tibetan plateau. It is the peninsular region south of the Himalayas and Kuen Lun mountain ranges and east of the Indus River and the Iranian Plateau, extending southward into the Indian Ocean between the Arabian Sea (to the southwest) and the Bay of Bengal (to the southeast).


title: South Asia

text: The climate of this vast region varies considerably from area to area from tropical monsoon in the south to temperate in the north. The variety is influenced by not only the altitude but also by factors such as proximity to the seacoast and the seasonal impact of the monsoons. Southern parts are mostly hot in summers and receive rain during monsoon periods. The northern belt of Indo-Gangetic plains also is hot in summer, but cooler in winter. The mountainous north is colder and receives snowfall at higher altitudes of Himalayan ranges.


title: South Asia

text: As the Himalayas block the north-Asian bitter cold winds, the temperatures are considerably moderate in the plains down below. For the most part, the climate of the region is called the Monsoon climate, which keeps the region humid during summer and dry during winter, and favours the cultivation of jute, tea, rice, and various vegetables in this region.


title: South Asia

text: Maximum relative humidity of over 80% has been recorded in Khasi and Jaintia Hills and Sri Lanka, while the area adjustment to Pakistan and western India records lower than 20%–30%. Climate of South Asia is largely characterized by monsoons. South Asia depends critically on monsoon rainfall. Two monsoon systems exist in the region:


title: South Asia

text: The warmest period of the year precedes the monsoon season (March to mid June). In the summer the low pressures are centered over the Indus-Gangetic Plain and high wind from the Indian Ocean blows towards the center. The monsoons are the second coolest season of the year because of high humidity and cloud covering. But, at the beginning of June, the jetstreams vanish above the Tibetan Plateau, low pressure over the Indus Valley deepens and the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) moves in. The change is violent. Moderately vigorous monsoon depressions form in the Bay of Bengal and make landfall from June to September.


title: South Asia

text: Climate change in South Asia is causing a range of challenges including sea level rise, cyclonic activity, and changes in ambient temperature and precipitation patterns.


title: South Asia

text: This list includes dependent territories within their sovereign states (including uninhabited territories), but does not include claims on Antarctica. EEZ+TIA is exclusive economic zone (EEZ) plus total internal area (TIA) which includes land and internal waters.


title: South Asia

text: The population of South Asia is about 1.749 billion which makes it the most populated region in the world. It is socially very mixed, consisting of many language groups and religions, and social practices in one region that are vastly different from those in another.


title: South Asia

text: There are numerous languages in South Asia. The spoken languages of the region are largely based on geography and shared across religious boundaries, but the written script is sharply divided by religious boundaries. In particular, Muslims of South Asia such as in Afghanistan and Pakistan use the Arabic alphabet and Persian Nastaliq. Till 1952, Muslim-majority Bangladesh (then known as East Pakistan) also mandated only the Nastaliq script, but after that adopted regional scripts and particularly Bengali, after the Language Movement for the adoption of Bengali as the official language of the then East Pakistan. Non-Muslims of South Asia, and some Muslims in India, on the other hand, use scripts such as those derived from Brahmi script for Indo-European languages and non-Brahmi scripts for Dravidian languages and others.


title: South Asia

text: The Nagari script has been the "primus inter pares" of the traditional South Asian scripts. The Devanagari script is used for over 120 South Asian languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Pali, Konkani, Bodo, Sindhi and Maithili among other languages and dialects, making it one of the most used and adopted writing systems in the world. The Devanagari script is also used for classical Sanskrit texts.


title: South Asia

text: The largest spoken language in this region is Hindustani language, followed by Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, and Punjabi. In the modern era, new syncretic languages developed in the region such as Urdu that are used by the Muslim community of northern South Asia (particularly Pakistan and northern states of India). The Punjabi language spans three religions: Islam, Hinduism, and Sikhism. The spoken language is similar, but it is written in three scripts. The Sikh use Gurmukhi alphabet, Muslim Punjabis in Pakistan use the Nastaliq script, while Hindu Punjabis in India use the Gurmukhi or Nāgarī script. The Gurmukhi and Nagari scripts are distinct but close in their structure, but the Persian Nastaliq script is very different.


title: South Asia

text: English, with British spelling, is commonly used in urban areas and is a major economic lingua franca of South Asia.


title: South Asia

text: In 2010, South Asia had the world's largest population of Hindus, about 510 million Muslims, over 27 million Sikhs, 35 million Christians and over 25 million Buddhists. Hindus make up about 68 percent or about 900 million and Muslims at 31 percent or 510 million of the overall South Asia population, while Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Sikhs constitute most of the rest. The Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and Christians are concentrated in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, while the Muslims are concentrated in Afghanistan (99%), Bangladesh (90%), Pakistan (96%) and Maldives (100%).


title: South Asia

text: Indian religions are the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent; namely Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. The Indian religions are distinct yet share terminology, concepts, goals and ideas, and from South Asia spread into East Asia and southeast Asia. Early Christianity and Islam were introduced into coastal regions of South Asia by merchants who settled among the local populations. Later Sindh, Balochistan, and parts of the Punjab region saw conquest by the Arab caliphates along with an influx of Muslims from Persia and Central Asia, which resulted in spread of both Shia and Sunni Islam in parts of northwestern region of South Asia. Subsequently, under the influence of Muslim rulers of the Islamic sultanates and the Mughal Empire, Islam spread in South Asia. About one-third of the world's Muslims are from South Asia.


title: South Asia

text: South Asia is home to some of the most populated urban areas in the world. According to the 2020 edition of "Demographia World Urban Areas", the region contains 8 of the world's 35 megacities (urban areas over 10 million population):


title: South Asia

text: Cricket is the most popular sport in South Asia, with 90% of the sport's worldwide fans being in the Indian subcontinent. There are also some traditional games, such as kabaddi and kho-kho, which are played across the region and even officially at the South Asian Games.


title: South Asia

text: India is the largest economy in the region (US$3.535 trillion) and makes up almost 80% of the South Asian economy; it is the world's 5th largest in nominal terms and 3rd largest by purchasing power adjusted exchange rates (US$11.745 trillion). India is the member of G-20 major economies and BRICS from the region. It is the fastest-growing major economy in the world and one of the world's fastest registering a growth of 7.3% in FY 2014–15.


title: South Asia

text: India is followed by Bangladesh, which has a GDP of ($411 billion) and a GDP per capita of $2,554, which is 4th in the region above India and Pakistan. It has the fastest GDP growth rate in Asia. It is one of the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, and is also listed among the Next Eleven countries. It is also one of the fastest-growing middle-income countries. It has the world's 33rd largest GDP in nominal terms and is the 27th largest by purchasing power adjusted exchange rates ($1.015 trillion). Bangladesh's economic growth crossed 7% in fiscal 2015–2016 after almost a decade in holding a growth rate of 6%, and is expected to grow by 8.13% in 2019–2020. Pakistan has an economy of ($314 billion) and ranks 5th in GDP per capita in the region. Next is Sri Lanka, which has the 2nd highest GDP per capita and the 4th largest economy in the region. According to a World Bank report in 2015, driven by a strong expansion in India, coupled with favorable oil prices, from the last quarter of 2014 South Asia became the fastest-growing region in the world


title: South Asia

text: According to the World Bank's 2011 report, based on 2005 ICP PPP, about 24.6% of the South Asian population falls below the international poverty line of $1.25/day. Afghanistan and Bangladesh rank the highest, with 30.6% and 43.3% of their respective populations below the poverty line. Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka have the lowest number of people below the poverty line, with 2.4%, 1.5% and 4.1% respectively. India has lifted the most people in the region above the poverty line between 2008 and 2011, with around 140 million being raised from the poverty line. As of 2011, 21.9% of India's population lives below the poverty line, compared to 41.6% in 2005.


title: South Asia

text: The major stock exchanges in the region are Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) with market Capitalization of $2.298 trillion (11th largest in the world), National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) with market capitalization of $2.273 trillion (12th largest in the world), Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), and Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) with market capitalization of $72 billion.


title: South Asia

text: Economic data is sourced from the International Monetary Fund, current as of April 2017, and is given in US dollars.


title: South Asia

text: One of the key challenges in assessing the quality of education in South Asia is the vast range of contextual difference across the region, complicating any attempt to compare between countries. In 2018, 11.3 million children at the primary level and 20.6 million children at the lower secondary level were out-of-school in South Asia, while millions of children completed primary education without mastering the foundational skills of basic numeracy and literacy.


title: South Asia

text: According to UNESCO, 241 million children between six and fourteen years or 81 percent of the total were not learning in Southern and Central Asia in 2017. Only sub-Saharan Africa had a higher rate of children not learning. Two-thirds of these children were in school, sitting in classrooms. Only 19 percent of children attending primary and lower secondary schools attaining a minimum proficiency level in reading and mathematics. According to a citizen-led assessment, only 48% in Indian public schools and 46% of children in Pakistan public schools could read a class two level text by the time they reached class five. This poor quality of education in turn has contributed to some of the highest drop-out rates in the world, while over half of the students complete secondary school with acquiring requisite skills.


title: South Asia

text: In South Asia, classrooms are teacher-centred and rote-based, while children are often subjected to corporal punishment and discrimination. Different South Asian countries have different education structures. While by 2018 India and Pakistan has two of the most developed and increasingly decentralised education systems, Bangladesh still had a highly centralised system, and Nepal is in a state of transition from a centralized to a decentralized system. In most South Asian countries children's education is theoretically free; the exceptions are the Maldives, where there is no constitutionally guaranteed free education, as well as Bhutan and Nepal, where fees are charged by primary schools. But parents are still faced with unmanageable secondary financial demands, including private tuition to make up for the inadequacies of the education system.


title: South Asia

text: The larger and poorer countries in the region, like India and Bangladesh, struggle financially to get sufficient resources to sustain an education system required for their vast populations, with an added challenge of getting large numbers of out-of-school children enrolled into schools. Their capacity to deliver inclusive and equitable quality education is limited by low levels of public finance for education, while the smaller emerging middle-income countries like Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan have been able to achieve universal primary school completion, and are in a better position to focus on quality of education.


title: South Asia

text: Children's education in the region is also adversely affected by natural and human-made crises including natural hazards, political instability, rising extremism and civil strife that makes it difficult to deliver educational services. Afghanistan and India are among the top ten countries with the highest number of reported disasters due to natural hazards and conflict. The precarious security situation in Afghanistan is a big barrier in rolling out education programmes on a national scale.


title: South Asia

text: According to UNICEF, girls face incredible hurdles to pursue their education in the region, while UNESCO estimated in 2005 that 24 million girls of primary-school age in the region were not receiving any formal education. Between 1900 and 2005, most of the countries in the region had shown progress in girls' education with Sri Lanka and the Maldives significantly ahead of the others, while the gender gap in education has widened in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Bangladesh made the greatest progress in the region in the period increasing girls’ secondary school enrolment from 13 percent to 56 percent in ten years.


title: South Asia

text: With about 21 million students in 700 universities and 40 thousand colleges India had the one of the largest higher education systems in the world in 2011, accounting for 86 percent of all higher-level students in South Asia. Bangladesh (two million) and Pakistan (1.8 million) stood at distant second and third positions in the region. In Nepal (390 thousand) and Sri Lanka (230 thousand) the numbers were much smaller. Bhutan with only one university and Maldives with none hardly had between them about 7000 students in higher education in 2011. The gross enrolment ratio in 2011 ranged from about 10 percent in Pakistan and Afghanistan to above 20 percent in India, much below the global average of 31 percent.


title: South Asia

text: According to World Health Organization (WHO), South Asia is home to two out of the three countries in the world still affected by polio, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with 306 & 28 polio cases registered in 2014 respectively. Attempts to eradicate polio have been badly hit by opposition from militants in both countries, who say the program is cover to spy on their operations. Their attacks on immunization teams have claimed 78 lives since December 2012.


title: South Asia

text: The World Bank estimates that India is one of the highest ranking countries in the world for the number of children suffering from malnutrition. The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world and is nearly double that of Sub Saharan Africa with dire consequences for mobility, mortality, productivity, and economic growth.


title: South Asia

text: According to the World Bank, 70% of the South Asian population and about 75% of South Asia's poor live in rural areas and most rely on agriculture for their livelihood according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation. In 2015, approximately 281 million people in the region were malnourished. The report says that Nepal reached both the WFS target as well as MDG and is moving towards bringing down the number of undernourished people to less than 5% of the population. Bangladesh reached the MDG target with the National Food Policy frameworkwith only 16.5% of the population undernourished. In India, the malnourished comprise just over 15 percent of the population. While the number of malnourished people in the neighborhood has shown a decline over the last 25 years, the number of under-nourished in Pakistan displays an upward trend. There were 28.7 million hungry in Pakistan in the 1990sa number that has steadily increased to 41.3 million in 2015 with 22% of the population malnourished. Approximately 194.6 million people are undernourished in India, which accounts for the highest number of people suffering from hunger in any single country.


title: South Asia

text: The 2006 report stated, "the low status of women in South Asian countries and their lack of nutritional knowledge are important determinants of high prevalence of underweight children in the region". Corruption and the lack of initiative on the part of the government has been one of the major problems associated with nutrition in India. Illiteracy in villages has been found to be one of the major issues that need more government attention. The report mentioned that although there has been a reduction in malnutrition due to the Green Revolution in South Asia, there is concern that South Asia has "inadequate feeding and caring practices for young children".


title: South Asia

text: India is a secular federative parliamentary republic with the prime minister as head of government. With most populous functional democracy in world and world's longest written constitution, India has been stably sustaining the political system it adopted in 1950 with no regime change except that by a democratic election. India's sustained democratic freedoms are unique among the world's newer establishments. Since the formation of its republic abolishing British law, it has remained a democracy with civil liberties, an active Supreme Court, and a largely independent press. India leads region in Democracy Index. It has a multi-party system in its internal regional politics whereas alternative transfer of powers to alliances of Indian left-wing and right-wing political parties in national government provide it with characteristics of a two-party state. India has been facing notable internal religious conflicts and separatism however consistently becoming more and more stable with time.


title: South Asia

text: Foundation of Pakistan lies in Pakistan movement started in colonial India based on Islamic nationalism. Pakistan is a federal parliamentary Islamic republic and was the world's first country to adopt Islamic republic system to modify its republican status under its otherwise secular constitution in 1956. Pakistan's governance is one of the most conflicted in the world. The military rule and the unstable government in Pakistan has become a concern for the South Asian region. Out of 22 appointed Pakistani Prime ministers, none has been able to complete a full term in office. The nature of Pakistani politics can be characterized as a multi-party system. Pakistan's governance is one of the most conflicted in the region. The military rule and the unstable government in Pakistan have become a concern for the South Asian region.


title: South Asia

text: The unitary semi-presidential constitutional republic of Sri Lanka is oldest sustained democracy in Asia. Tensions between Sinhalese and Tamils led to Sri Lankan civil war that undermined the country's stability for more than two and a half decades. Sri Lanka however, has been leading region in HDI with per capita GDP well ahead of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The political situation in Sri Lanka has been dominated by an increasingly assertive Sinhalese nationalism, and the emergence of a Tamil separatist movement under LTTE, which was suppressed in May 2009.


title: South Asia

text: Bangladesh is a unitary parliamentary republic. Law of Bangladesh defines it as both Islamic as well as secular. The nature of Bangladeshi politics can be characterized as a multi-party system. Bangladesh is a unitary state and parliamentary democracy. Bangladesh also stands out as one of the few Muslim-majority democracies. "It is a moderate and generally secular and tolerant — though sometimes this is getting stretched at the moment — alternative to violent extremism in a very troubled part of the world", said Dan Mozena, the U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh. Although Bangladesh's legal code is secular, more citizens are embracing a conservative version of Islam, with some pushing for sharia law, analysts say. Experts say that the rise in conservatism reflects the influence of foreign-financed Islamic charities and the more austere version of Islam brought home by migrant workers in Persian Gulf countries.


title: South Asia

text: By the 18th century, the Hindu Gorkha Kingdom achieved the unification of Nepal. Hinduism became the state religion and Hindu laws were formulated as national policies. A small oligarchic group of Gorkha region based Hindu Thakuri and Chhetri political families dominated the national politics, military and civic affairs until the abdication of the Rana dynasty regime and establishment of Parliamentary democratic system in 1951, which was twice suspended by Nepalese monarchs, in 1960 and 2005. It was the last Hindu state in world before becoming a secular democratic republic in 2008. The country's modern development suffered due to the various significant events like the 1990 Nepalese revolution, 1996–2006 Nepalese Civil War, April 2015 Nepal earthquake and the 2015 Nepal blockade by India leading to the grave 2015–2017 Nepal humanitarian crisis. There is also a huge turnover in the office of the Prime Minister of Nepal leading to serious concerns of political instability. The country has been ranked one of the poor countries in terms of GDP per capita but it has one of the lowest levels of hunger problem in South Asia. When the stability of the country ensured as late as recent, it has also made considerable progress in development indicators outpacing many other South Asian states.


title: South Asia

text: Afghanistan has been a unitary theocratic Islamic emirate since 2021. Afghanistan has been suffering from one of the most unstable regimes on earth as a result of multiple foreign invasions, civil wars, revolutions and terrorist groups. Persisting instability for decades have left the country's economy stagnated and torn and it remains one of the most poor and least developed countries on the planet, leading to the influx of Afghan refugees to neighboring countries like Iran.


title: South Asia

text: Bhutan is a Buddhist state with a constitutional monarchy. The country has been ranked as the least corrupt and peaceful with most economic freedom in the region in 2016. Myanmar's politics is dominated by a military Junta, which has sidelined the democratic forces led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Maldives is a unitary presidential republic with Sunni Islam strictly as the state religion.


title: South Asia

text: India has been the dominant geopolitical power in the region and alone accounts for most part of the landmass, population, economy and military expenditure in the region. India is a major economy, member of G4, has world's third highest military budget and exerts strong cultural and political influence over the region. Sometimes referred as a great power or emerging superpower primarily attributed to its large and expanding economic and military abilities, India acts as fulcrum of South Asia.


title: South Asia

text: Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are middle powers with sizeable populations and economies with significant impact on regional politics.


title: South Asia

text: During the Partition of India in 1947, subsequent violence and territorial disputes left relations between India and Pakistan sour and very hostile and various confrontations and wars which largely shaped the politics of the region and led to the creation of Bangladesh. With Yugoslavia, India found Non-Aligned Movement but later entered an agreement with former Soviet Union following western support for Pakistan. Amid the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, US sent its USS "Enterprise" to the Indian Ocean what was perceived as a nuclear threat by India. India's nuclear test in 1974 pushed Pakistan's nuclear program who conducted nuclear tests in Chagai-I in 1998, just 18 days after India's series of nuclear tests for thermonuclear weapons.


title: South Asia

text: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 accelerated efforts to form a union to restrengthen deteriorating regional security. After agreements, the union was finally established in Dhaka in December 1985. However, deterioration of India-Pakistan ties have led India to emphasize more on sub-regional groups SASEC and BBIN.


title: South Asia

text: South Asia continues to remain least integrated region in the world. Meanwhile, in East Asia, regional trade accounts for 50% of total trade, it accounts for only a little more than 5% in South Asia.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 () is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language comedy horror film directed by Anees Bazmee, written by Aakash Kaushik and Farhad Samji, and produced by Bhushan Kumar and Krishan Kumar under the banner T-Series Films and Murad Khetani and Anjum Khetani under the banner Cine1 Studios. A standalone sequel to "Bhool Bhulaiyaa" (2007) and the second installment in the "Bhool Bhulaiyaa Franchise", the film stars Tabu, Kartik Aaryan, and Kiara Advani. The plot follows Ruhaan Randhawa, who has to pretend to be a fraud psychic to deal with the return of Manjulika, a malevolent spirit hell-bent on vengeance against the Thakur family.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: Principal photography began in October 2019 and filming was completed in February 2022. Primarily filmed in real mansions in Jaipur and Lucknow, other shooting locations included Mumbai and Manali. The film's score was composed by Sandeep Shirodkar while the songs were composed by Pritam and Tanishk Bagchi, with lyrics written by Amitabh Bhattacharya, Sameer, Yo Yo Honey Singh, Mandy Gill and Saaveri Verma. It features a remix single of the 2007 film's title track by Neeraj Shridhar.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: Initially set for release on 31 July 2020, "Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" was delayed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was theatrically released worldwide on 20 May 2022 and received generally positive reviews from critics, with particular praise for Tabu and Aaryan's performances, humour, musical score, cinematography and direction but received criticism for the writing, editing and soundtrack. The film has earned worldwide to become the third highest-grossing Hindi film of 2022.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: Across a mansion in Bhawanigarh, Rajasthan in 2004, the priests confine a malevolent spirit named Manjulika, who is hell-bent on attacking the family's daughter-in-law Anjulika to a room. After this, the family deserts the mansion for safety.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: 18 years later, in Himachal Pradesh, Ruhaan Randhawa meets Reet Thakur who is on a trip to Bhawanigarh via Chandigarh to marry her fiancée Sagar reluctantly. They board a bus to Chandigarh but cut short their journey for attending a music carnival and later discover that the bus they were supposed to travel met with an accident, killing everyone on board. Subsequently, the Thakurs, who are owners of the mansion that was deserted 18 years ago, assumed her to be dead. Reet tries contacting her family but over the phone she overhears a conversation between Trisha and Sagar, realizing an affair brewing between them. Seeking to earn them the gift of marriage so she could avoid falling into it, Reet plays along her family's presumption about her demise and travels to Bhawanigarh with a hesitating Ruhaan.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: They decide to hide in the deserted ancestral mansion, but Chote Pandit, a priest, spots the doors of the mansion opened and informs the Thakurs, who along with the villagers enter the mansion and spot Ruhaan, who covers up the situation by lying that Reet's spirit led him there and her final wish is to see her family living in the ancestral mansion and that too with Trisha being married. Under Ruhaan's influence, The Thakurs fix Trisha's wedding with Sagar. Due to his presumed ability of communicating with spirits, Ruhaan becomes popular as "Rooh Baba", where he and Reet become friends. When Ruhaan is led to the room where the spirit was trapped, Anjulika, Reet's sister-in-law, warns him to stay away from the room and reveals that the spirit is actually Anjulika's twin sister Manjulika.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: The sisters had migrated to the mansion when their father Debanshu was asked to manage accounts for the Thakurs. Debanshu's biased affection towards Anjulika's talents instilled jealousy in Manjulika which turned into hatred. In 2004, both the sisters fell in love with Uday Thakur, Reet's elder brother. However, Uday reciprocated Anjulika's feelings leaving Manjulika fuming and deceived. Manjulika, who sought solace in learning black magic, decided to use the magic as a weapon against Anjulika. On the night of Uday and Anjulika's wedding, Manjulika brutally stabbed Debanshu for finding out the truth and set out to murder Anjulika, but she saved herself and stabbed Manjulika in self-defense killing her. Despite being dead, Manjulika did not leave the family alone as her spirit continued to harm them and paralyzed Uday by pushing him off the balcony. The priests captured Manjulika and lock her in the third floor.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: After the flashback, Reet's father reveals to Ruhaan that Manjulika's curse had killed eight members of their family. One night, Chote Pandit finds Ruhaan and Reet roaming around the mansion and discovers the truth. With the help of his elder brother Bade Pandit and his wife whose business is being affected due to Ruhaan's popularity, Chote Pandit spearheads a search in the mansion. Knowing that no one would enter Manjulika's room, Reet resolves to hide there and Chote Pandit's accusations are proved false to the family. Freed, Manjulika attacks Anjulika, who discovers the truth about Reet being alive and joins hands with Ruhaan and Reet to ward off the spirit. They take help from the same priest who captured Manjulika's spirit but he tells them that he requires three days. Manjulika's spirit possesses the priest and makes him kill his disciples before being killed by himself. Ruhaan encounters the spirit and falls off the terrace out of fear.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: Ruhaan returns to the palace, conversing in Bengali, and claims himself to be Manjulika revealing that he is possessed. The Thakurs spot Reet and learn that she is alive. Ruhaan attacks Anjulika, who uses Reet as a human shield by threatening to slit her throat if Ruhaan attacks her and addresses him as "Anjulika", which confuses the family. Ruhaan reveals that he has been putting up an act of being possessed by the spirit and that the woman who died in 2004 was actually Anjulika while one who is living with them is the real Manjulika.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: In 2004, after killing Debanshu with the help of the priest, revealed to be Manjulika's accomplice, Manjulika influenced Anjulika using black magic and stole her identity. Disguised as Manjulika under the influence of black magic, Anjulika attacked Manjulika who stabbed her to death under the pretext of self-defense. When Uday discovered the truth, Manjulika pushed him off the balcony, paralyzing him and thus preventing him from telling anyone. She also killed eight members of the family for learning the truth. Presently, Anjulika's spirit attacks Manjulika and imprisons her in the same room in which she got locked in 2004. Anjulika's spirit has a moment with her family and asks Reet's father to forgive her since it revealed the truth of Anjulika and Manjulika. She thanks Ruhaan and asks the family to leave as she has unfinished business with Manjulika. Anjulika enters the room and kills the real Manjulika. The whole Thakur family leaves the palace, which becomes abandoned again.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: A sequel to "Bhool Bhulaiyaa" (2007) was officially announced on 19 August 2019. Bhushan Kumar, chairman of T-Series, had long considered creating a franchise based on the 2007 film. Aakash Kaushik and Farhad Samji had two separate scripts prepared for their independent films. Samji felt that elements of their two scripts could work together for a new film, and they pitched the idea to producer Murad Khetani. Khetani felt the idea had promise and could work as a sequel to "Bhool Bhulaiyaa". Eventually, he approached Kumar, who came on board, collaborating with Khetani for the second time since "Kabir Singh", which also starred Kiara Advani.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: "Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" began filming on 9 October 2019 and wrapped up on 25 February 2022. Aaryan lost his voice while filming the climax sequence of the film. It was filmed in a real mansion. Filming was occurring in Lucknow, before the pandemic disrupted schedule. It was shot in Mumbai and Manali.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: "Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" was released on 20 May 2022. The film was originally scheduled to be released in theaters on July 31, 2020, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: The digital streaming rights of the film are acquired by Netflix. The film was digitally streamed on Netflix from 19 June 2022.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: The music of the film was composed by Pritam while Tanishk Bagchi appeared as the guest composer for recreating the title track along with Pritam. The lyrics were written by Amitabh Bhattacharya, Sameer, Yo Yo Honey Singh, Mandy Gill and Saaveri Verma.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: The song "Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 - Title Track" was recreated from the title track for the 2007 film "Bhool Bhulaiyaa" which was sung by Neeraj Shridhar and written by Sameer. This is the second time the song is being recreated after 2017 film which was the titled "Hare Krishna Hare Ram" sung by Armaan Malik, Raftaar, Ritika and composed by Gourov-Roshin.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: The song "Ami Je Tomar/Mere Dholna Sun" from the prequel was also retained in the film. Shreya Ghoshal, who sung "Mere Dholna" in the 2007 prequel, reprised her vocals and is featured in three different versions of the song in the film.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: The fans of the song "Ami Je Tomar" wanted the voices of Shreya and Arijit for a duet on the song. The song was also released with the title "Ami Je Tomar Kartik X Vidya" on June 28, 2022, take from each video clip of the song.


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: "Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" received positive reviews from critics. A critic for "Bollywood Hungama" gave the film four and a half stars out of five and wrote, ""Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" is a complete entertainer and works due to the splendid combo of horror and comedy." Pallabi Dey Purkayastha of "The Times of India" rated it three and a half stars out of five and wrote, ""Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" is an agglomeration of grief and the grieving." Rohit Vats of "Daily News and Analysis" gave it three and a half stars out of five and wrote, ""Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" is an out and out entertainer and next in the line of typical Bollywood 'masala' films." Avinash Lohana of "Pinkvilla" rated the film three stars out of five and wrote, "Kartik, Kiara and Tabu live up to their parts. The film has a mass appeal and the potential to bring the audience back into the theatres." Tushar Joshi of "India Today" similarly gave the film three stars out of five and wrote, ""Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" has all the masala and makings to satiate the taste buds. It's funny in places, tries to be scary most of the time, but like its title, its efforts get somewhere lost in a maze." Bharathi Pradhan of "Lehren" also gave it the same rating and wrote, "Tabu proves once again that she's a rare blend of versatility in performance with an arresting face. It's not the kind of film where you stop to look for logic."


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: Rohit Bhatnagar of "The Free Press Journal" rated the film three stars out of five and wrote, "Horror-comedy is a tricky genre, but Anees Bazmee dabbles with funny one-liners and jump scares together quite well." Devesh Sharma of "Filmfare", also with three stars out of five, wrote, "Watch the film for Tabu's and Kartik's performances and for its comic elements." Nandini Ramnath of "Scroll.in" also gave the film three stars out of five and wrote, ""Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" moves along on its hero's insouciance, Tabu's screen presence, and patches of entertaining comedy." In a mixed review, Sukanya Verna of "Rediff.com" rated the film two and a half stars out of five and found that the film did not take itself seriously to its strength, writing, ""Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" is a silly scary movie that knows it is a silly scary movie." Shalini Langer of "The Indian Express" rated the film two stars out of five and felt the humour could have been more sensitive: "There are repeated jokes at the expense of an overweight child and a hard-of-hearing pandit." With one and a half stars out of five, Tatsam Mukherjee of "Firstpost" lamented for the sequel having no narrative relation with the previous film, writing, "While the 2007 film used the vessel of a horror film to tell a rather important story about mental illness, the sequel regresses into actual "bhoot-pret" (ghost-spirits)."


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: The film showed a jump in collections on third day. There has been a uniform growth of about 35 to 40 percent on the second day, and this is a sign of acceptance from the audience. "Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2" earned at the domestic box office on its opening day. On the second day, the film collected . On the third day, the film collected taking total domestic weekend collection to .


title: Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2

text: , the film grossed in India and overseas, for a worldwide gross collection of to become the third highest-grossing Hindi film of 2022.


title: Geena Davis

text: Virginia Elizabeth "Geena" Davis (born January 21, 1956) is an American actor and producer. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.


title: Geena Davis

text: After studying drama at Boston University, Davis made her acting debut in the film "Tootsie" (1982) and eventually starred in the thriller "The Fly" (1986), which proved to be one of her first box office hits. While the fantasy comedy "Beetlejuice" (1988) brought her to prominence, the drama "The Accidental Tourist" (1988) earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She established herself as a leading lady with the road film "Thelma & Louise" (1991), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the sports film " A League of Their Own" (1992), garnering a Golden Globe Award nomination. However, Davis's roles in the box office failures "Cutthroat Island" (1995) and "The Long Kiss Goodnight" (1996), both directed by then-husband Renny Harlin, were followed by a lengthy break and downturn in her career.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis starred as the adoptive mother of the titular character in the "Stuart Little" franchise (1999–2005) and as the first female president of the United States in the television series "Commander in Chief" (2005–2006), winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for her role in the latter. Her later films include "Accidents Happen" (2009) and "Marjorie Prime" (2017). She has portrayed the recurring role of Dr. Nicole Herman in "Grey's Anatomy" (2014–2015, 2018) and that of Regan MacNeil–Angela Rance in the first season of the horror television series "The Exorcist" (2017).


title: Geena Davis

text: In 2004, Davis launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which works collaboratively with the entertainment industry to dramatically increase the presence of female characters in media. Through the organization, she launched the annual Bentonville Film Festival in 2015, and executive produced the documentary "This Changes Everything" in 2018. Thanks to the organization, she was awarded with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award bestowed by the Academy Awards in 2019 and with the Governors Award given by the Primetime Emmy Awards in 2022.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis was born on January 21, 1956, in Wareham, Massachusetts. Her mother, Lucille (), was a teacher's assistant, and her father, William F. Davis, was a civil engineer and church deacon. Both were from small towns in Vermont. Davis has an older brother, Danforth ("Dan").


title: Geena Davis

text: She became interested in music at an early age. She learned piano and flute and played organ well enough as a teenager to be organist at her Congregational church in Wareham.Davis was also a cheerleader and was cheer captain her senior year of high school. She attended Wareham High School and was an exchange student in Sandviken, Sweden, where she became fluent in Swedish. She studied at New England College. However, she never completed her bachelor's degree in drama from Boston University in Her first post-university work was as a model for window mannequins at Ann Taylor; she then signed with New York's Zoli modeling agency.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis is said to have adopted the nickname Geena after seeing shows with the characters Cheburashka and Gena the Crocodile (Swedish "Drutten och Gena"), which aired as a children's segment in a national television show in Sweden in the late 1970s.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis was working as a model when she was cast by director Sydney Pollack in his film "Tootsie" (1982) as a soap opera actor, whom she has described as "someone who's going to be in their underwear a lot of time". It was the second most profitable film of 1982, received ten Academy Awards nominations and is considered a cult classic. She next won the regular part of Wendy Killian in the television series "Buffalo Bill", which aired from June 1983 to March 1984; and had a writing credit in one episode. Despite the series' eleven Emmy Awards nominations, lukewarm ratings led to its cancellation after two seasons. Davis concurrently guest-starred in "Knight Rider", "Riptide", "Family Ties" and "Remington Steele", and followed with a series of her own, "Sara", which lasted 13 episodes.


title: Geena Davis

text: During this period, she also auditioned for the 1984 science fiction/action film "The Terminator", reading for the lead role of Sarah Connor, which eventually went to Linda Hamilton. In "Fletch" (1985), an action comedy, she appeared with Chevy Chase as the colleague of a "Los Angeles Times" undercover reporter trying to expose drug trafficking on the beaches of Los Angeles. She also starred in the horror comedy "Transylvania 6-5000" as a nymphomaniac vampire alongside future husband Jeff Goldblum. They also starred in the sci-fi thriller "The Fly" (1986), loosely based on George Langelaan's 1957 short story of the same name, where Davis portrayed a science journalist and an eccentric scientist's love interest. It was a commercial success and helped establish her as an actor. In 1987 she appeared with Goldblum again in the offbeat comedy "Earth Girls Are Easy".


title: Geena Davis

text: Director Tim Burton cast Davis in his film "Beetlejuice" (1988) as one of a recently deceased young couple who become ghosts haunting their former house; it also starred Alec Baldwin, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. It made $73.7 million from a budget of $15 million, and Davis's performance and the overall film received mostly positive reviews.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis took on the role of an animal hospital employee and dog trainer with a sickly son in the drama "The Accidental Tourist" (1988), opposite William Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Critic Roger Ebert, who gave the film four stars out of four, wrote: "Davis, as Muriel, brings an unforced wackiness to her role in scenes like the one where she belts out a song while she's doing the dishes. But she is not as simple as she sometimes seems [...]". The film was a critical and commercial success, and she received an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for her appearance in it.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis appeared as the girlfriend of a man who, dressed as a clown, robs a bank in midtown Manhattan, in the comedy "Quick Change" (1990). Based on a book of the same name by Jay Cronley, it is a remake of the 1985 French film "Hold-Up" starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Despite modest box office returns, the "Chicago Tribune" found the lead actors "funny and creative while keeping their characters life-size". Davis next starred with Susan Sarandon in Ridley Scott's road film "Thelma & Louise" (1991), as friends who embark on a road trip with unforeseen consequences. A critical and commercial success, it is considered a classic, as it influenced other films and artistic works and became a landmark feminist film. Davis received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role. It also featured Brad Pitt in his breakout role as a drifter; in his 2020 acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor, Pitt thanked director Ridley Scott and Geena Davis for "giving me my first shot."


title: Geena Davis

text: In 1992, Davis starred alongside Madonna and Tom Hanks in "A League of Their Own" as a baseball player on an all-women's team. It reached number one at the box office, became the tenth highest-grossing film of the year in North America, and brought Davis a Best Actress Golden Globe Award nomination. She played a television reporter in the comedy "Hero" (also 1992) alongside Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia. Although it flopped at the box office, Roger Ebert felt Davis was "bright and convincing as the reporter (her best line, after surviving the plane crash, is shouted through an ambulance door: "This is my story! I did the research!")".


title: Geena Davis

text: In 1994's "Angie", Davis played an office worker who lives in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn and dreams of a better life. The film received mixed reviews from critics, despite much praise for Davis, and was a commercial failure. In her other 1994 release, "Speechless", Davis reunited with Michael Keaton to play insomniac writers who fall in love until they realize that both are writing speeches for rival candidates in a New Mexico election. Despite negative reviews and modest box office returns, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy for her performance.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis teamed up with her then-husband, director Renny Harlin, for the films "Cutthroat Island" (1995) and "The Long Kiss Goodnight" (1996), with Harlin hoping that they would turn her into an action star. While "The Long Kiss Goodnight" managed to become a moderate success, "Cutthroat Island" flopped critically and commercially and was once listed as having the "largest box office loss" by "Guinness World Records". The film is credited to be a contributing factor in the demise of Davis as a bankable star. She divorced Harlin in 1998 and took an "unusually long" two years off to reflect on her career, according to "The New York Times". She appeared as Eleanor Little in the well-received family comedy "Stuart Little" (1999), a role she reprised in "Stuart Little 2" (2002) and again in "" (2005).


title: Geena Davis

text: By the mid and late 1990s, Davis's film career had become less noteworthy and critical acclaim had waned. In a 2016 interview with "Vulture", she recalled: "Film roles really did start to dry up when I got into my 40s. If you look at IMDb, up until that age, I made roughly one film a year. In my entire 40s, I made one movie, "Stuart Little". I was getting offers, but for nothing meaty or interesting like in my 30s. I'd been completely ruined and spoiled. I mean, I got to play a pirate captain! I got to do every type of role, even if the movie failed."


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis starred in the sitcom "The Geena Davis Show", which aired for one season on ABC during the 2000–01 U.S. television season. She went on to star in the ABC television series "Commander in Chief", portraying the first female president of the United States. While this role garnered her a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama Series in 2006, the series was cancelled after its first season; Davis admitted she was "devastated" by its cancellation in a 2016 interview. "I still haven't gotten over it. I really wanted it to work. It was on Tuesday nights opposite "House", which wasn't ideal. But we were the best new show that fall. Then, in January, we were opposite "American Idol". They said, 'The ratings are going to suffer, so we should take you off the air for the entire run of "Idol", and bring it back in May. I put a lot of time and effort into getting it on another network, too, but it didn't work". She was also nominated for an Emmy Award and a SAG Award for Outstanding Female Actor in a Drama Series. She was awarded the 2006 Women in Film Lucy Award.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis was the only American actor to be cast in the Australian-produced film "Accidents Happen" (2009), portraying a foul-mouthed and strict mother. She stated that it was the most fun she had ever had on a film set, and felt a deep friendship and connection to both of the actors who played her sons. Written by Brian Carbee and based on his own childhood and adolescence, the film received a limited theatrical release and mixed reviews from critics. "Variety" found it to be "led by a valiant Geena Davis", despite a "script that mistakes abuse for wit".


title: Geena Davis

text: Following a long period of intermittent work, Davis often ventured into television acting, and through her organization, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, saw her career expand during the 2010s. In 2012, she starred as a psychiatrist in the miniseries "Coma", based on the 1977 novel "Coma" by Robin Cook and the subsequent 1978 film. She played a powerful female movie executive in the critically acclaimed comedy "In a World..." (2013), the directorial debut of Lake Bell. Bell found her only dialogue to be her favorite in the film and called it her "soapbox moment".


title: Geena Davis

text: In 2014, Davis provided her voice for the English version of the Studio Ghibli animated film "When Marnie Was There", as she was drawn to the film's abundant stories and strong use of female characters. She played the recurring role of Dr. Nicole Herman, an attending fetal surgeon with a life-threatening brain tumor, during the 11th season of "Grey's Anatomy" (2014–15). In 2015, Davis launched an annual film festival to be held in Bentonville, Arkansas, to highlight diversity in film, accepting films that prominently feature minorities and women in the cast and crew. The first Bentonville Film Festival took place from May 5–9, 2015. Davis appeared as the mother of a semi-famous television star in the comedy "Me Him Her" (2016).


title: Geena Davis

text: In the television series "The Exorcist" (2016), based on the 1973 film of the same name, Davis took on the role of grown-up Regan MacNeil, who has renamed herself Angela Rance to find peace and anonymity from her ordeal as a child. "The Exorcist" was a success with critics and audiences. In 2017, Davis starred in the film adaptation "Marjorie Prime", alongside Jon Hamm, playing the daughter of an 85-year old experiencing the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, and appeared as the imaginary god of a heavyset 13-year-old girl in the comedy "Don't Talk to Irene". "Vanity Fair" wrote that she stole "every scene" in "Marjorie Prime", while "Variety", on her role in "Don't Talk to Irene", remarked: "There's no arguing the preternatural coolness of Geena Davis—a fact celebrated in self-conscious fashion by "Don't Talk to Irene", a familiar type of coming-of-age film whose most distinguishing feature is the presence of the actress".


title: Geena Davis

text: In 2018, Davis returned to "Grey's Anatomy", reprising the role of Dr. Nicole Herman in the show's 14th season, and executive produced the documentary "This Changes Everything", in which she was also interviewed about her experiences in the industry. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it was named first runner-up for the . In 2019, she joined the voice cast of "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power" as Huntara. Also in Netflix in 2019, she joined the cast of "GLOW" as Sandy Devereaux St. Clair, a former showgirl turned entertainment director of the Fan-Tan Hotel and Casino. In 2022, Davis' likeness will be used for the character of Poison Ivy in the DC Entertainment comic book series "Batman '89", set between the events of "Batman Returns" (1992) and "The Flash" (2022).


title: Geena Davis

text: In October 2022, HarperOne published Davis's "Dying of Politeness: A Memoir" of her journey from childhood conventional New England femininity and trauma to feminist "badassery", one role at a time, on screen and in the real world.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis began dating restaurateur Richard Emmolo in December 1977 and moved in with him a month later. The two married on March 25, 1981, but separated in February 1983 and divorced on June 27, 1984. She then dated future "Thelma and Louise" co-star Christopher McDonald, to whom she was briefly engaged.


title: Geena Davis

text: In 1985, she met her second husband, actor Jeff Goldblum, on the set of "Transylvania 6-5000". The couple married on November 1, 1987, and appeared together in two more films: "The Fly" and "Earth Girls Are Easy". Davis filed for divorce in October 1990, and it was finalized the following year. In 2022, Davis told "People" that her relationship with him "was a magical chapter in my life."


title: Geena Davis

text: Bodyguard Gavin de Becker was Davis' boyfriend during the early 1990s. After a five-month courtship, she married filmmaker Renny Harlin on September 18, 1993. He directed her in "Cutthroat Island" and "The Long Kiss Goodnight". Davis filed for divorce on August 26, 1997, a day after her personal assistant Tiffany Browne gave birth to a child fathered by Harlin. The divorce became final in June 1998.


title: Geena Davis

text: In 1998, Davis started dating Iranian-American craniofacial plastic surgeon Reza Jarrahy, and allegedly married him on September 1, 2001. They have three children: a daughter, Alizeh (born April 2002), and fraternal twin sons, Kaiis and Kian (born May 2004). In May 2018, Jarrahy filed for divorce from Davis, listing their date of separation as November 15, 2017. Davis responded by filing a petition in which she claimed that she and Jarrahy were never legally married.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis is a supporter of the Women's Sports Foundation and an advocate for Title IX, an Act of Congress focusing on equality in sports opportunities, now expanded to prohibit gender discrimination in American educational institutions.


title: Geena Davis

text: In 2004, while watching children's television programs and videos with her daughter, Davis noticed an imbalance in the ratio of male to female characters. She went on to sponsor the largest-ever research project on gender in children's entertainment (resulting in four discrete studies, including one on children's television) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. The study, directed by Stacy Smith, showed that there were nearly three male characters to every female one in the nearly 400 G, PG, PG-13, and R-rated movies analyzed. In 2005, Davis teamed up with the non-profit group "Dads and Daughters" to launch a venture dedicated to balancing the number of male and female characters in children's television and movie programming.


title: Geena Davis

text: Davis launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media in 2007, which works collaboratively with the entertainment industry to increase the presence of female characters in media aimed at children, and to reduce inequality in Hollywood and the stereotyping of females by the male-dominated industry. For her work in this field she received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Bates College in May 2009; and an honorary Oscar, the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 2019.


title: Geena Davis

text: In 2011, Davis became one of a handful of celebrities attached to USAID and Ad Council's FWD campaign, an awareness initiative tied to that year's East Africa drought. She joined Uma Thurman, Chanel Iman and Josh Hartnett in television and internet ads to "forward the facts" about the crisis.


title: Geena Davis

text: In July 1999, Davis was one of 300 women who vied for a semifinals berth in the U.S. Olympic archery team to participate in the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. She placed 24th and did not qualify for the team, but participated as a wild-card entry in the Sydney International Golden Arrow competition. In August 1999, she stated that she was not an athlete growing up and that she entered archery in 1997, two years before her tryouts.


title: Brian May

text: Brian Harold May (born 19 July 1947) is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and astrophysicist, who achieved worldwide fame as the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen. May was a co-founder of Queen with lead singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor. His songwriting contributions helped Queen become among the most successful acts in music history.


title: Brian May

text: May previously performed with Taylor in the blues rock band Smile, which he had joined while he was at university. After Queen's formation in 1970, bass guitarist John Deacon joined to complete the line-up in 1971. They became one of the biggest rock bands in the world with the success of the album "A Night at the Opera" and its single "Bohemian Rhapsody". From the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, Queen played at some of the biggest venues in the world, including at Live Aid in 1985. As a member of Queen, May became regarded as a virtuoso musician. He was identified with a distinctive sound created through his layered guitar work, often using a home-built electric guitar called the Red Special. May wrote numerous hits for Queen, including "We Will Rock You", "I Want It All", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Flash", "Hammer to Fall", "Save Me", "Who Wants to Live Forever", "Too Much Love Will Kill You", and "The Show Must Go On".


title: Brian May

text: Following the death of Mercury in 1991, aside from the 1992 tribute concert, the release of "Made in Heaven" (1995) and the 1997 tribute single to Mercury, "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)" (written by May), Queen were put on hiatus for several years but were eventually reconvened by May and Taylor for further performances featuring other vocalists. In 2005, a Planet Rock poll saw May voted the seventh-greatest guitarist of all time. He was ranked at No. 26 on "Rolling Stone" list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In 2012, he was ranked the second-greatest guitarist in a "Guitar World" magazine readers poll. In 2001, May was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Queen and in 2018 the band received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.


title: Brian May

text: May was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 for "services to the music industry and for charity work". May earned a PhD degree in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007, and was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008 to 2013. He was a "science team collaborator" with NASA's "New Horizons" Pluto mission. He is also a co-founder of the awareness campaign Asteroid Day. Asteroid 52665 Brianmay was named after him. May is also an animal rights activist, campaigning against the hunting of foxes and the culling of badgers in the UK.


title: Brian May

text: Brian Harold May was born 19 July 1947 in a nursing home at Hampton Hill, near Twickenham, Middlesex, the only child of Ruth Irving ("née" Fletcher) and Harold May, who worked as a draughtsman at the Ministry of Aviation. His mother, who was Scottish, married his father, who was English, at Moulin in Perthshire, Scotland in 1946. May attended the local Hanworth Road state primary school, and at the age of 11 won a scholarship to Hampton Grammar School, then a voluntary aided school. During this time, he formed his first band, named 1984 after George Orwell's novel of the same name, with vocalist and bassist Tim Staffell.


title: Brian May

text: At Hampton Grammar School, May attained ten GCE Ordinary Levels and three GCE Advanced Levels in Physics, Mathematics, and Applied Mathematics. He studied Mathematics and Physics at Imperial College London, graduating with a BSc degree in Physics in 1968 with honours. Following his graduation, May received a personal invitation from Sir Bernard Lovell to work at the Jodrell Bank Observatory while continuing to prepare his doctorate. He declined, choosing instead to remain at Imperial College to avoid breaking from Smile, the London-based band he was in at the time.


title: Brian May

text: In 2007, May was awarded a PhD degree in astrophysics from Imperial College London for work started in 1971 and completed in 2007.


title: Brian May

text: May formed the band Smile in 1968. The group included Tim Staffell as the lead singer and bassist, and later, drummer Roger Taylor, who also went on to play for Queen. The band lasted for only two years, from 1968 to 1970, as Staffell departed in 1970, leaving the band with a catalogue of nine songs. Smile would reunite for several songs on 22 December 1992. Taylor's band The Cross were headliners, and he brought May and Staffell on to play "Earth" and "If I Were a Carpenter". May also performed several other songs that night.


title: Brian May

text: In Queen's three-part vocal harmonies, May was generally the lower-range backing vocalist. On some of his songs, he sings the lead vocals, most notably the first verse of "Who Wants to Live Forever", the final verse of "Mother Love", the middle eight on "I Want It All" and "Flash's Theme", and full lead vocals on "Some Day One Day", "She Makes Me (Stormtrooper in Stilettoes)", "'39", "Good Company", "Long Away", "All Dead, All Dead", "Sleeping on the Sidewalk", "Leaving Home Ain't Easy" and "Sail Away Sweet Sister" .


title: Brian May

text: May frequently wrote songs for the band and has composed many hits such as "We Will Rock You", "Tie Your Mother Down", "I Want It All", "Fat Bottomed Girls", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "The Show Must Go On" as well as "Hammer to Fall", "Flash", "Now I'm Here", "Brighton Rock", "The Prophet's Song", "Las Palabras de Amor", "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)" and "Save Me".


title: Brian May

text: After the Live Aid concert in 1985, Mercury rang his band members and proposed writing a song together. The result was "One Vision", which was basically May on music (the "Magic Years" documentary shows how he came up with the opening section and the basic guitar riff); the lyrics were co-written by the four band members.


title: Brian May

text: For their 1989 release album, "The Miracle", the band had decided that all of the tracks would be credited to the entire band, no matter who had been the main writer. Interviews and musical analyses tend to help identify the input of each member on each track. May composed "I Want It All" for that album, as well as "Scandal" (based on his problems with the British press). For the rest of the album, he did not contribute much creatively. However, he helped in building the basis of "Party" and "Was It All Worth It" (both being predominantly Mercury's pieces) and created the "Chinese Torture" guitar riff.


title: Brian May

text: Queen's subsequent album was "Innuendo". May's contributions increased, although more in terms of arranging than actual writing in most cases. He did some of the arrangement for the heavy solo on the title track. He added vocal harmonies to "I'm Going Slightly Mad" and composed the solo for "These Are the Days of Our Lives", a song for which the four of them decided the keyboard parts together.


title: Brian May

text: Two songs May had composed for his first solo album, "Headlong" and "I Can't Live With You", eventually ended up on the Queen project. His other composition was "The Show Must Go On", which he coordinated and was the primary composer. In recent years, he has supervised the remastering of Queen albums and various DVD and greatest hits releases. In 2004, he announced that he and drummer Roger Taylor were going on tour for the first time in 18 years as "Queen", along with Free/Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers. Billed as "Queen + Paul Rodgers", the band played throughout 2005 and 2006 in South Africa, Europe, Aruba, Japan, and North America and released a new album with Rodgers in 2008, entitled "The Cosmos Rocks". This album was supported by a major tour.


title: Brian May

text: Paul Rodgers left the band in May 2009. It was not until 2011 that another vocalist, Adam Lambert, was recruited. Queen + Adam Lambert toured Europe in 2012 and toured the world tour over 2014 and 2015. Their most recent outing was the 2016 Festival Tour. They also played the Big Ben New Year concert on New Year's Eve 2014 and New Year's Day 2015.


title: Brian May

text: During 1983, several members of Queen explored side projects. On 21 and 22 April in Los Angeles, May was in a studio with Eddie Van Halen, with no intention of recording anything. The result of the two-day session was a mini album titled "Star Fleet Project", which was not originally going to be released. In 1986, May contributed to former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett's album "Feedback 86", playing guitar on the track "Cassandra" and providing guitar and vocals for "Slot Machine", which May co-wrote. Although produced in 1986, the album was not released commercially until 2000. In the same year, May worked with actress Anita Dobson on her first album, most noted for the song "Anyone Can Fall in Love", which added lyrics to the "EastEnders" theme tune and reached number four on the UK Singles Chart in August 1986. May and Dobson married in 2000. In 1988, May contributed guitar solos to the song "When Death Calls" on Black Sabbath's 14th album "Headless Cross", and the Living in a Box track "Blow The House Down" on the album "Gatecrashing". Both albums were released in 1989.


title: Brian May

text: In the aftermath of the November 1991 death of Mercury, May chose to deal with his grief by committing himself as fully as possible to work, first by finishing his solo album, "Back to the Light", and then touring worldwide to promote it. He frequently remarked in press interviews that this was the only form of self-prescribed therapy he could think of. According to Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott, "It was undoubtedly an enormous and terrible blow to lose someone he was so close to. Personally, I know it ripped the heart out of Brian, but having said that, he was in great spirits after the album was finished." "Back to the Light" featured the single "Too Much Love Will Kill You", on which he collaborated as a songwriter with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers. A version with Freddie Mercury's vocals was later released on the Queen album "Made in Heaven" and won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically & Lyrically in 1996.


title: Brian May

text: In late 1992, the Brian May Band was officially formed. May had loosely formed an earlier version of the band for 19 October 1991, when May took part in the Guitar Legends guitar festival in Seville, Spain. The line-up for his performance was May on vocals and lead guitar, Cozy Powell on drums and percussion, Mike Moran and Rick Wakeman on keyboards, and Maggie Ryder, Miriam Stockley and Chris Thompson on backing vocals. The original line-up was May on vocals and lead guitar, Powell on drums and percussion, Michael Casswell on guitar, Neil Murray on bass, and Ryder, Stockley and Thompson on backing vocals. This version of the band was together only during the South American support tour (supporting The B-52's and Joe Cocker) on five dates.


title: Brian May

text: Afterwards, May made significant changes, feeling the group never quite gelled. May brought guitarist Jamie Moses on board to replace Mike Caswell. The backing vocalists, Ryder, Stockley and Thompson, were replaced by Catherine Porter and Shelley Preston. On 23 February 1993, this new line-up of The Brian May Band began its world tour in the US, supporting Guns N' Roses and headlining a few dates. The tour included dates in North America, Europe (support act: Valentine) and Japan. On 15 June 1993, the band did a show in London that would end up as The Brian May Band's only release as a collective, namely Live at the Brixton Academy. At the show, May would sing a few lines of "Love of My Life", and then, as Mercury used to, let the audience join in. After the tour ended on 18 December 1993, May returned to the studio with fellow surviving Queen band members Roger Taylor and John Deacon to work on tracks that became "Made in Heaven", the final Queen studio album. The band took Mercury's solo album demos and last recordings, which he managed to perform in the studio after the album "Innuendo" was finished, and completed them with their additions both musically and vocally. After Mercury's death, work on the album by Deacon and May began originally in 1992 but was left until a later date due to other commitments.


title: Brian May

text: In 1995, May began working on a new solo album of covers tentatively titled "Heroes", in addition to working on various film and television projects and other collaborations. May subsequently changed the approach from covers to focus on those collaborations and new material. The songs included "Another World", and featured mainly Spike Edney, Cozy Powell, Neil Murray and Jamie Moses. On 5 April 1998, Cozy Powell was killed in a car accident on the M4 motorway near Bristol, England. This incident caused an unexpected disruption to the upcoming tour for The Brian May Band, which now needed a new drummer on short notice. Steve Ferrone was brought on to help May finish recording the drum tracks and join the band for the early stage promotional tour of five dates in Europe before the world tour. Following the early promotional tour, Eric Singer replaced him on the 1998 world tour.


title: Brian May

text: The 1998 tour saw the brief introduction of a 'support act' known as T. E. Conway. Conway (Brian May in a wig and colourful suit playing the part of a teddy boy crooner) would play several 1950s rock and roll standards before May's 'arrival'. A bonus T. E. Conway EP entitled "Retro Rock Special" was attached to some pressings of the "Another World" album. The Conway character was retired at the end of the tour.


title: Brian May

text: In May 1999, May recorded lead guitars for the Guns N' Roses song "Catcher in the Rye" on "Chinese Democracy", however, his performance was removed from the album by the time it was released in 2008.


title: Brian May

text: From his last solo release in 1998, May has been performing as a solo artist, as part of an ensemble, and infrequently as Queen with Roger Taylor. On 22 October 2000, he made a guest appearance at the Motörhead 25th Anniversary show at Brixton Academy along with Eddie Clarke (former Motörhead guitarist) for the encore song "Overkill". As part of the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II celebrations on 3 June 2002, May performed a guitar solo of "God Save the Queen" from the roof of Buckingham Palace, with the performance appearing on the 30th Anniversary DVD edition of "A Night at the Opera". May played guitar on the song "Someone to Die For" on the "Spider-Man 2" soundtrack in 2004.


title: Brian May

text: On the Queen's birthday honours list of 2005, he was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire "for services to the music industry and for charity work". In the same year he played the guitar on the song "Il mare..." for Italian singer Zucchero Fornaciari, on his album "Zu & Co.", and he took part in the concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London held in May 2004, with the other guests of the Italian bluesman. May was a celebrity guest at the Genesis reunion concert at Twickenham Stadium in 2007. May and Genesis frontman Phil Collins worked together on two previous occasions, at The Prince's Trust Rock Gala in 1988 and the Party at the Palace in 2002, when Collins had played drums with Queen. In 2011 he contributed to a feature about Collins for "FHM", praising him as "a great guy and an amazing drummer".