Sanjay Leela Bhansali has confirmed that his upcoming project with Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will be filmed in English and aimed at the international market. “I know it is important to make films for our market but it’s the time when our cinema should reach the remotest corner of the world,” he explains, “Language is hardly any barrier today and it is not the first time that I am making a film in English. Black was in English too.”
Economists are predicting that 2009 may see a turning point in Bollywood with international production houses such as Warner Bros, Disney and Sony becoming more involved in the industry and looking for partnerships and capital investments that will benefit from the predicted economic growth of India over the next five years. This should also lead to elements of production being outsourced to India from Hollywood and also the greater use of Indian actors being used in Hollywood, possibly through more Hollywood plots being located there.
Both Hrithik and Aishwarya are both well-established in Indo-American movie correspondence. Hrithik recently filmed extensive portions of his new movie Kites in the US with Mexican actress Barbara Mori and Kangana Ranaut. Aishwarya, of course, is probably Bollywood’s best-known face internationally with commercial appearances in movies such as Bride & Prejudice and Pink Panther 2, as well as independent cinema such as the underated Provoked and The Mistress of Spices. Together, the two had one of the biggest hits of 2008 in Jodhaa Akbar which won or was nominated for many international prizes in countries as diverse as Tatarstan, Poland and the UK.
Finally, Aishwarya appears to have signed up for a Back To The Future style movie alongside Akshay Kumar which hit the floor for filming in the spring. It’s provisionally titled Action Replay.
