Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit will play the role of Indira Gandhi in a two-part biopic directed by Indian-origin filmmaker Krishna Shah which may also feature Hollywood actors Tom Hanks and Tommy Lee Jones.
Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit will play the role of Indira Gandhi in a two-part biopic directed by Indian-origin filmmaker Krishna Shah which may also feature Hollywood actors Tom Hanks and Tommy Lee Jones.
According to Shah, Madhuri Dixit has been picked to play the lead role in one of the films titled 'Mother: The Indira Gandhi Story'. Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren is in talks to reprise her role as Queen Elizabeth II while Hanks and Jones are being lined up to play Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon. British actress Emily Watson has been chosen to play Margaret Thatcher and Albert Finney is expected to take the role of Peter Ustinov, who was in New Delhi waiting to meet Gandhi when she was killed.
The film, seen as a major collaboration between Hollywood and Bollywood, will have a budget of 40 million pounds, and are due to begin filming in April in India, UK, Russia and the US, the Daily Telegraph reported. "This is the project of my life, both in its scale and the subject. I have been working on the script for over two decades and it is simply a story that has to be told. It took me years to find a way into her story, but I found it with her role as a mother both to her family and to a nation with its teeming millions. Indira was India," Shah said. "The story is of how Indira is a mother in every aspect of her life, and how she used her instincts, compassion and tough love to hold the nation together ultimately ending with her violent death and martyrdom to the cause of national unity.
The centrepiece of the first film will be a 30 minute war sequence portraying India's 1971 war with Pakistan featuring big budget special effects and the emergence of Gandhi as India's "Goddess of War". The film will be in Hinglish and is scheduled for release at the end of 2010. "The films will chart her life from being a shy housewife who stumbled upon the role of Prime Minister, through leading her country to victory in the 1971 War with Pakistan, to her commitment to secularisation, women empowerment and the backward classes," the director said.
The second film will portray Gandhi's efforts to unite India, the rise of her son Sanjay Gandhi and ends with her assassination at the hands of her own Sikh bodyguards in 1984. Shah hoped the collaboration between the two industries will make tie-ups more commonplace in the next decade. "The distinction between the two is now starting to blur. Bollywood is starting to shift its outlook, which is a hugely positive move and to diversify is the way forward for Indian cinema," he said. Shah's direction credits include films like 'Hard Rock Zombies', 'American Drive-In', 'Cinema Cinema' and 'Shalimar'.
The 42-year-old Dixit is known for her roles in blockbusters like 'Beta', Tezaab', 'Dil' and 'Devdas'. Her last Bollywood film was 'Aaja Nach Le', which did not do well at the box-office. She lives in the US with her doctor husband Shriram Nene and two sons Arin and Raayan.
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