Bollywood finally goes to Hollywood
Showbiz Desk

Mumbai—Considering it’s being directed by New York-based Indian filmmaker Manish Gupta, whose credits include the diaspora comedy “India Fish in American Waters”, how Hollywoodish is the much talked about Sushmita Sen-Randeep Hooda-Drena de Niro project “Karma Confession & Holy”?
“Very, very Hollywood,” says Harish Dayani, chief executive of the movie division of Sa Re Ga Ma. “‘Karma Confession & Holy’ will have some of the top-most names from Hollywood including Lysa Cooper, one of the world’s biggest stylists. Lysa will be doing Sushmita and Drena’s looks
“And the director of photography is Lisa Lene, who assisted Stanley Kubrick. Some other top-notch Hollywood names are being finalised. The whole script was re-written to give it a very global texture and flavour.” While Sushmita and Randeep play the younger Indian couple, Suresh Oberoi and Rati Agnihotri star as the older couple.
Suchitra Krishnamurthy, recently seen in Ram Gopal Varma’s “My Wife’s Murder”, will appear as a traditional sari-clad Indian woman married to an American. “It will be a very Woody Allen kind of film covering three layers of characters - the Indians from India and in the US, the Indians born and bred in the US and the true-blue Americans,” says Harish Dayani.
For the American parts, Sa Re Ga Ma has almost finalised two of the hottest Hollywood names. So, is this finally the beginning of Bollywood’s true merger with Hollywood? “It looks like it. We have plans of starting another Hollywood film early next year. The process of globalising Bollywood has started.”
While “Karma Confession & Holy” goes into production in the US this month, back home Sa Re Ga Ma has projects planned back-to-back from now till the beginning of 2007. In November, Sa Re Ga Ma launches “Geet”, directed by Imtiaz Ali and featuring Bobby Deol and Bhoomika Chawla. In February 2006, the music house goes into its ambitious mythological epic “Draupadi”, directed by Rituparno Ghosh.
“The cast including the main lead will be decided as soon as Ritu finishes his script,” reveals Harish Dayani. Thereafter Sa Re Ga Ma will produce a film to be directed by the talented Anant Mahadevan, fearturing two male and two female leads.
Mayur Puri, who assisted Sanjay Gadhvi in “Dhoom”, and Anubhav Sinha direct the next two productions to be launched in July 2006. Anubhav’s film called “Race” will be in the “Dhoom” genre. In December 2006-Jan 2007, Samar Khan will direct “Sufi” for Sa Re Ga Ma.