Mumbai, Aug 6 - Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is pleasantly surprised that his 'Agyaat' is being released on more screens than any of his earlier films despite not boasting of big stars. The horror thriller opens on 740 screens in Hindi and 220 in Telugu.

The film, releasing Friday, stars Nitin Kumar Reddy, Priyanka Kothari and Gautam Rode.

'I don't understand it. 'Agyaat' has no big stars, and yet it will open on more screens across the world than ever before, even more than 'Sarkar Raj', which had the highest star value among all my films,' Varma told IANS.

'Not bad for a non-star film, huh? I think there're two kind of releases. The ones with the star value and the ones where the genre is the star. I don't have to tell you which genre 'Agyaat' falls into,' he added.

Would he attribute the large number of prints to the hype created by the publicity?

'I think we did a good job of creating hype. Even the dummy corpses worked,' said Varma, who landed in a controversy after the publicity stunt for 'Agyaat' saw around 15 dummies of dead bodies suspended from the movie's posters.