Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta has announced that she will be delaying the movie Komagatu Mori with Akshay Kumar until 2013 and will instead start work on her adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children first. “We’ve just finished the screenplay for Midnight’s Children and we’re going to do the casting in the next couple of weeks,” she explained. She has in fact already signed up a number of stars for the movie including Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi, together for the first time since Fire, and Seema Biswas.
Currently enjoying herself at the Pravasi Film Festival aimed at NRI movies, Deepa has been heavily promoting her brother Dilip’s film Cooking With Stella, which stars Seema Biswas, Lisa Ray and Shriya Saran. “The film has been a gala affair,” she said, “It has been in competition at festivals in Monte Carlo, Marbella, Toronto and Sao Paolo. As much as I would love to say it is my film, this is entirely Dilip’s baby. It was his story which as an elder sister I decided to pitch in for.”
Along with fellow Canadian resident Akshay Kumar, Deepa helped to carry the Olympic Torch for the Winter Olympics, after being told she could walk her 300m route. “Being a first generation Canadian, it took me a long time to feel entirely comfortable embracing Canada as my new home,” she stated, “As an Indo-Canadian, every experience that enables me to feel a part of this wonderful tapestry, I welcome with unabated enthusiasm.”
