The strike situation continues to cock up plans for major productions — Oliver Stone’s and Ron Howard’s next films have been goinked in the past week, with more likely to follow.
Joining them in the stack of scripts to get shredded is Johnny Depp’s longstanding passion project SHANTARAM, which was getting ready for a February start. The most recent postponement (the project was previously delayed when director Peter Weir left due to the obligatory “creative differences”) is only partially due to script problems — budget concerns and location logistics also factored into the latest dormancy.
The epic tale, based on events in the life of the book’s author Gregory Roberts, will (eventually) feature Depp as an Australian man who escapes from a hellish prison and journeys to India and beyond, where he ends up doing everything from playing doctor to laundering money and forging passports to engaging in guerrilla warfare against Russians. Depp is also producing, and Mira Nair (MONSOON WEDDING) is now directing.
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