Director Mira Nair’s $100mn movie project ‘Shantaram’ starring Amitabh Bachchan and Johnny Depp has run into trouble right from the pre-production stage.
d_riddhi@dnaindia.net
Director Mira Nair’s 100 million dollar movie project ‘Shantaram’ starring Amitabh Bachchan and Johnny Depp has run into trouble right from the pre-production stage.
Reportedly the budget of the film will also be downsized by five million dollars.
Apparently Warner Brothers have cancelled the contract with their Indian counterpart, On The Roads Production over ‘budget constraints’ and due to the ongoing writers’ strike in Hollywood. On The Roads production, which is headed by Dileep Singh Rathore, has been handling the production of the movie for the last two months.
Says a source, “Warner Brothers and On the Roads Production will have another round of talks on November 26. Thereafter the future course of the movie will be decided.”
The source adds, “But as of now Warner Brothers has asked On the Roads to wrap up.” When contacted, Dileep Singh Rathore did agree that he has bagged the production contract of ‘Shantaram’ project but he refused to comment further.
But insiders in sync with the project, reveal that the wrap up call came as a shock to the whole pre-production team as they had already set up two offices in Colaba. Moreover, about 70 per cent of the shooting locations have already been finalised along with the production team members, who have been visiting the city off and on.
According to sources, the movie was all set to be shot at Hampi in Karnataka and at Mukesh Mills compound in Colaba. In fact the film was supposed to go on the floors from February 2, 2008.
Our source adds, “The project is likely to be delayed by at least a month now. We don’t know about the future.”
On being prodded further, the source adds, “The budget has been the main reason for all the problems so far. Warner Brothers has downsized the project by five millions dollars without citing a reason to us. Thereafter, Nitin Desai walked out of the project.”
According to the source, Nitin Desai’s quoted price for the job was not acceptable to the ‘Shantaram’ production team. Also, we came to know that Desai insisted that most of the art set up should be done at his studio in Karjat. This was not acceptable to Warner Brothers.
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