Variety reports that two new films, both of them based on books, will be set in India. First, there is the new Peter Weir film:
Peter Weir will direct “Shantaram,” the Warner Bros. adaptation of the Gregory David Roberts novel that will star Johnny Depp.
Weir will develop the script with Eric Roth. WB hopes to begin production late next year.
Pic is being produced by Initial Entertainment Group’s Graham King along with Depp’s Infinitum Nihil banner and Plan B’s Brad Pitt.
When negotiations are complete, Weir — who last directed Russell Crowe in “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” — will take on a tale with the political and wartime tensions reminiscent of his early efforts like “The Year of Living Dangerously” and “Gallipoli.”
Protag is an Australian heroin addict who escapes a maximum-security prison and reinvents himself in India as a doctor in the slums of Bombay. His attempt to find medicine for his destitute patients leads him into counterfeiting, gunrunning and smuggling. . . .
Second, there is this adaptation of Barbara Hodgson’s first book:
The Jim Henson Co. has set Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley to adapt Barbara Hodgson suspense novel “The Tattooed Map.”
Deal reunites the writers with company principal Lisa Henson, who produced with Janet Yang the Fox/Regency pic “High Crimes,” which Zeltser and Bickley scripted. Henson Co. has so far put up its own coin to option the book and hire the writers, and Henson will produce the pic.
“It is about a couple’s relationship that is tested when they are overseas and a mysterious, tattooed map appears on the woman’s body,” said Zeltser. “It leads to a discovery of secrets from each other’s past.”
Bickley said the book’s Morocco locale is being switched to India for the pic. . . .
This particular story grabs my eye because I happened to interview Hodgson, a business partner of Griffin & Sabine author Nick Bantock’s, when The Tattooed Map first came out ten years ago. You can read the interview on page 5 of this PDF file.
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