Amitabh Bachchan in Ridley Scott’s next film? Yes, maybe…

Mumbai, JULY 2: Even as he gears up to share screen space with Johnny Depp in Mira Nair’s screen adaptation of the Gregory David Robert’s novel Shantaram, Amitabh Bachchan might also add Hollywood heavyweights Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe as his co-stars for Ridley Scott’s next.

The film in question is Scott’s ambitious Body of Lies, a thriller with an Al-Qaeda plot. William Monahan, who also wrote The Departed, has written the film. Bachchan received an email from Scott’s office last week.

“Ridley Scott wants me to play a part of the Jordanian in the film. I’ve asked for more details. I need to see the script before I take a call. Let’s be realistic. Who will notice me when DiCaprio and Crowe are in the same film?” Bachchan joked on the sidelines of Idea Exchange, a discussion forum hosted by the The Indian Express at Nariman Point.

The buzz is that the man behind masterpieces like Gladiator and Matchstick Men is really keen to direct Bachchan. The two first met in 2003 at the Marrakech Film Festival in Rabat, Morocco where Scott offered Bachchan a role in the 2005 spectacle Kingdom of Heaven.

Though Bachchan didn’t do that part, things look brighter this time round. Body of Lies has Crowe playing a CIA boss who teams up with DiCaprio as an operative trying to trap an Al Qaeda leader. The movie’s producers have been desperate to cast Crowe for months, and although he is on board, he wants to read “a polished rewrite” before committing to a contract.

Meanwhile, it seems the next big creative challenge for Bachchan is to act in English language films. Other than Shantaram, he’s just completed Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear where he plays an aging theatre actor in the Calcutta of the late 40’s. “It was my character’s greatest desire to play Lear, but he couldn’t fulfill it. Then they come to him with an offer to play a clown in the circus. And due to some circumstances he has to take it up. That’s the pathos in the film,” says Bachchan.

Bachchan is enjoying this new phase. “It keeps me creatively challenged, so its good. A good script is a good script whatever be the language of expression,” he says. The ball is now in Scott’s court. If the script is good then Leo and Russell better watch out.

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