Mouni Roy, Iulia Vantur, Aayush Sharma attend the special screening of Salman Khan’s Tiger Zinda Hai – view pics

Headlining the list of most surprising names was Akshay Kumar

In just a few hours Salman Khan’s next film, Tiger Zinda Hai, will open in theatres. But a lucky few got a chance to watch it at a special screening on Thursday night. The actor hosted a special screening of his action-packed film on Thursday night and in attendance were his family members and close friends in the industry. His dad, of course, the first one to watch the film, like the tradition goes. While Salim Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Sohail Khan were the most obvious names at the screening. Headlining the list of most surprising names was Akshay Kumar.

Others who attended the screening were Mouni Roy, Iulia Vantur, Aayush Sharma, Vatsal Seth, Ishita Dutta, Ahmed Khan, Ayushmann Khurrana, Karan Johar, Saqib Saleem, David Dhawan – to name a few. Check out the pictures below. 

Tiger Zinda Hai is an unexpected sequel to the hit 2012 film Ek Tha Tiger. Salman reprised his role of the badass Indian agent, this time on a rescue mission to save 25 Indian nurses from the clutches of Iraqi terrorists. Earlier in an interview talking about how Salman reacted to the idea of a sequel, director Ali Abbas Zafar had revealed,  “I went to Salman and said “Bhai! I have a story”. He asked me the title and I said Tiger Zinda Hai. And he said “Wah! Kya title hai! Chalo sunao“. And then I narrated him the story. Within 20 minutes he told me that ‘Ali whether this is a sequel or not I am going to do this film because the story is the hero here which is bigger than Tiger or Zoya.’

Katrina Kaif had said in an interview with BollywoodLife that when she heard about the sequel she was taken aback. “When Ali (Abbas Zafar) told me he was doing a sequel, I was very taken aback. I did not know it was in his mind. But Ali is like that, he always comes to me when he is almost ready like Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, Gunday. He always tells me about them when they are almost ready. He works silently which is the best way to work. A lot of people talk more and work less. He works more and talks less. I like that in a person. I was happy he came up with it. He really worked on it a lot. You could see a lot of structure has gone into it about his vision about the film. Which is not the vision I would have had in my head for a sequel. But now that I see it, I am like..aah, okay, that is what he wanted.” she said.

for more updates about Tiger Zinda Hai. Don’t forget to come back to read our review of the romance-action film.