MUMBAI: News is just trickling in that director Vishal Bhardwaj has begun work on his next ambitious project. After the debacle of his last film. Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola, he is returning to the bard to adapt yet another play into a screenplay.
Vishal Bhardwaj has in the past successfully adapted Shakespeare plays Macbeth as Maqbool and Othello into Omkara. This is going to be his third adaption of the playwright’s work. He has never had a miss with Shakespeare plays.
This time he is adapting Hamlet and he has decided to set it in Kashmir. The scripting of the film is complete and the film will be released in 2014 which is also the 450th year of the playwright’s birth anniversary.
Speaking of the film, he says, “I need a violent, political backdrop for Hamlet. Also, I believe that in the mainstream, we haven’t really made a film about what is happening in Kashmir.” Now that is a grey area. Recently when the makers of Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani shot in Kashmir and passed it off as Manali, the Chief Minister of J&K, Omar Abdullah was miffed and tweeted his displeasure.
This time, the Chief Minister has tweeted about the film, and is working to see that the film is rightly made and will portray Kashmir in good stanchion.
Adding further, director Vishal Bhardwaj says, “I hope I am able to achieve that as it is a very difficult subject to handle. Kashmir as well as ‘Hamlet’. I have made things difficult for myself but I thought for my trilogy let me at least attempt something bigger than me.”
He was in talks with Shah Rukh Khan for a film but that has not come through. Buzz is that actor Shahid Kapoor is in the running for the main lead in Hamlet.
