India's biggest special effects film
Shah Rukh Khan is producing a film that could have the country's most expensive film which will challenge the world's beliefs about the Bollywood film industry and showcase the Indian special effects and animation companies.
The film will have a budget of US $25 million and is to be the biggest and best visual effects film that India has ever produced.
Shah Rukh Khan said of the film:
"We are dedicating the next eight or nine months to taking the best technicians from around the world and asking them to help us make the best VFX film India has ever made...It will madcap, over the top. I want it to be as beautiful as 'Spider-Man' in terms of effects."
Anubhav Sinha has been signed to direct the film, which is to be titled according to Variety, and will have the feel of a videogame - oh dear, hopefully not Boll territory - and will be about children who wish for bad things and get a huge shock when these things actually become a reality.
Apparently Khan is in advanced discussions with Charles Darby who was the visual effects expert on The Matrix and Minority Report, and a company called Eros who he worked with to launch an effects company in Mumbai called Eyeqube Studios.
It sounds like Shah Rukh Khan is really pushing himself towards being a more global star. Already he is often quoted as being the world's most recognisable film star, something I find rather surprising, and he told Variety that he would love to do a comedy action film like Jackie Chan. He'd also like to work with Steven Spielberg, James Cameron or Ang Lee, something that the scope and size of this film might just get him. However for now his dreams are a little more modest, a little:
"As a producer I'd like to make the Indian film that genuinely crosses borders, where you forget that it has a language, like 'Life Is Beautiful.' I didn't realize at first that it was an Italian film. Or 'The Lives of Others.' I think I can do it in my lifetime, maybe in the next five years."
Now that is something I'd like to see, the merging of lines between Bollywood and Hollywood, not so that they become so much alike, but that they have a body of films that are easily accessible by both audiences and that expand the minds of each other's audiences. Perhaps this effects film might go a little way to doing just that.
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