Paan Singh Tomar, Kishore Kumar, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt... Bollywood gears up to unveil real-life stories on screen over the next few years. But is the Indian cinemagoer ready for a volley of biopics?

A star athlete gets embroiled in a land dispute back home in Morena, Madhya Pradesh. He picks up the rifle, gathers a gang and dies a classic dacoit death: an encounter. It was on a Sunday in 1991 that Tigmanshu Dhulia came across Paan Singh Tomar's story in an Anand Bazaar Patrika piece.

The filmmaker was then assisting Shekhar Kapur on Bandit Queen. For 18 years, he walked around with a paragraph-long story on the athlete-dacoit, determined to make a movie some day. Paan Singh Tomar, produced by UTV, starring Irrfan Khan and Mahie Gill, is up for release this May. It's Tigmanshu's first biopic, UTV's third and Bollywood's second in two years.