Mumbai: The Harry Potter film series, based on JK Rowling’s widely read novels, is a part of folklore in entertainment industry.
All 8 fantasy films, produced and distributed by Warner Bros Pictures, were box-office hits featuring in the top 100 highest-grossing films worldwide.
Now, brace for an Indian version of Harry Potter.
Shekhar Kapur, the award-winning director and actor, has revealed that he is planning to make the the ‘Indian equivalent’ of the Harry Potter franchise which be made in India and ‘not the West’.
“I am actually planning a project, which is kind of the Indian Harry Potter. I’m not making Harry Potter… but the Indian equivalent of it. Same genre. That genre of Harry Potter because I think in India, with the market we have, we are so used to things that are otherworldly. We’ve grown up with those kind of stories. I am now developing and probably will make a film franchise like Harry Potter, that comes out of India and not the West,” the 77-year-old filmmaker said in an interview with The Times of India.
Kapur, who has helmed films like ‘Masoom’, ‘Mr India’, ‘Bandit Queen’ and ‘Elizabeth’, said he lost about 5, 6 years of his time on the unmade film ‘Paani’.
“I wanted to make Paani as an Indian production. Because one of the things that I always felt was, Slumdog Millionaire, even though it made around $400 million worldwide, was not called an Indian film. I really wanted Paani to be an Indian film. I came back to India to make it, even though at one point, I was thinking of making it in Spanish. I had thought of setting it in Mexico City, because we have the same problems over there, too. The same confrontations and the culture is the same. But I lost about five, six years of my life at that time,” Kapur revealed.
Kapur’s last directorial venture was ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’, which released last year and featured the likes of Shabana Azmi, Emma Thompson and Lily James. The film had its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival and was adjudged Best Comedy film at Rome Film Fest in October 2022.
