Hollywood now set to make movie on Mughals

ONCE BITTEN: Hollywood's first brush with the Taj Mahal did not find many takers.

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Keywords: Taj Mahal, Krishna Shah

Mumbai: The story behind the Taj Mahal makes for an interesting plot for a feature film, which is probably why a script around the monument of love made news recently when the writer picked up a cool 2 crores rupees for it.

The seventeenth-century monument of love has often been a back drop to songs and has, over decades, inspired filmmakers to tell its story.

David Lean and Alexander Korda tried to get Hollywood interested in the Taj Mahal story but failed. Now scriptwriter Krishna Shah's script on the monument of love has been picked up for a whopping Rs 2 crores by American producers.

"The Mughal courtroom tales have manipulation have intrigue, they have drama. Then there are scheming family members, fathers against sons and sons against mothers, and then, at the core of it all, is a love story," explains scriptwriter Krishna Shah.

To be directed by Micheal Radford of Il Postino fame, the film will star both Asian and American actors, tracing the history of Mughals venturing into India from Central Asia.

Interestingly, Ben Kingsley, too, will be making a film on Shah Jahan's love story, and has zeroed in on Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Bipasha Basu for the cast.

"His idea of how to do the film is very interesting, so we are planning to work on the film soon. The script has come to me many times though. This time, the film's concept is very inspiring," said Aishwarya.

In the sixties, Pradeep Kumar-starrer Taj Mahal captured the imagination of thousands of Indians with its haunting music. But the cold response to Akbar Khan's Taj Mahal, made in 2005, raises questions about the subject's relevance.

Still ambitious, Khan is now dubbing his film into thirteen languages to re-release it worldwide.