26/11/2009

British actor Sir Ben Kingsley, best known for his Academy Award winning portrayal of Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s biopic, is all set to return to India. In the £15-18 million budget Taj, Kingsley will play the 17th century Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.

Shah Jahan ruled most of the Indian subcontinent between 1628 and 1658. The death of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal in childbirth inspired him to build the Taj Mahal between 1632 and 1654 as a shrine to her. In 1658, the emperor was deposed by his son Aurangzeb and placed under house arrest, where he eked out his remaining years within sight of the mausoleum until his death in 1666.

Indian actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan (The Pink Panther 2) will play Mumtaz Mahal and Kingsley’s wife, Brazilian actress Daniela Lavender, will play the emperor’s first wife Kandahari Begum. Kingsley’s SBK Pictures will produce and is looking for Indian investment. British playwright and writer David Ashton has written the screenplay. A director is yet to be attached. Production is due to commence in autumn 2010.

Kingsley said, “With my passion for India and the Taj Mahal now becoming one of the Seven Wonders of the World, I am compelled to ask ‘why’ and ‘how’ this scream of grief frozen in marble came into being, it is an indelible monument to passion and love. How did the building evolve in the first place, that is the question we’re looking at.”

Several versions of the Taj Mahal story have been committed to celluloid, the most recent being Akbar Khan’s Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005). Indian director Bharat Bala had begun filming a version of the story in the IMAX format, also starring Rai Bachchan as Mumtaz Mahal, but that project remains incomplete.