Schrader’s ‘Xtrme City’ is Mumbai
Paul Schrader – of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull screenplay fame – tying up with Mushtaq Shiekh – of Om Shanti Om, Billu and under-production Ra.1 screenplay fame – could be as interesting as mashing up chalk and cheese. But then, it’s happening for real. And soon.
The two, along with Anubhav Sinha – of Cash, Dus, Ra.1 fame – will make a film called Xtrme City. Yes, you guessed it right. It will be a story set in Mumbai, with the world of its bhailogs forming the backdrop.
Scrader is as interesting a film personality as Danny Boyle is, and one does not know if he got inspired by Boyle’s decision to return to Mumbai post Slumdog Millionaire, by producing Anurag Kashyap’s planned Bombay Velvet (hope the Shiv Sena-MNS combine does not force Boyle and Kashyap to rename it as Mumbai Velvet!).
But what is more interesting about the project is Schrader’s joining hands with Shiekh and Sinha, who, unlike his gritty vision as a screenwriter-director, have been working up the gloss without much soul in whatever they have done till now.
For the record, Xtrme City, whose cast is not yet ready but the announcement about which said it would have a “Bollywood megastar” (could it be SRK, considering Shiekh’s much-vaunted close friendship with him, and that SRK stars in Ra.1?) and a “Hollywood star”, will be shot in 2010 and released in 2011.
Reportedly with a $10 million budget, Xtrme City will be an action thriller set in the “brutal, impenetrable, criminal orbit of Mumbai”, with protagonist Curtis Hawkley, a former U.S. Ranger forced to return to Mumbai to rescure his father-in-law’s kidnapped youngest daughter, joining hands with his old friend Raj Rangan, an Indian Special Forces Commando.
“Xtrme City is cross-cultural entertainment that merges the cinematic traditions of Bollywood and Hollywood,” Schrader said in a statement coinciding with the announcement.
Schrader has been visiting India in recent times. Last year, he held a master class at the Osian’s Cinefan film festival last year (it was a MASTERCLASS, with the man taking everyone back to how he did not even have a home to live in when he wrote the script of Taxi Driver, living literally, well, in a car). This year, he is about to be back as a jury member at the MAMI Festival in Mumbai (starting 29th Oct).
“Spending time in India and working with a Bollywood talent like Shiekh has inspired and excited me to make a film accessible and meaningful to both Indian and American cultures,” said the director of Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, which was executive produced by Francis Coppola and George Lucas.
Schrader was first approached with a proposal for a Hindi film when he attended the Osian’s Cinefan Festival, which is when he got inspired to make a film set in India. “I didn’t think it (the proposal given to him) was very good, so I came up with a better film,” he has told
Variety magazine.
Interesting, interesting….
Tags: anubhav sinha, Mushtaq Shiekh, Paul Schrader, Xtrme City
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Im waiting for this…just waiting for hollywood to realise that theyre choosing all the wrong people to work with in bollywood..
but then again im hope my predictive senses are wrong and that this turns out to be a good film =)
paul schrader kya baat hain first day first show
I had respect for Schrader’s intellect. No more. Hope this news is just a sad li’l rumor.
Else, hopefully, the old man makes a vulgar sum of money out of it and ‘cuts’ the chootiya of the Indian ‘minds’ mentioned.
Nothing seems to be rational anymore.