To the Summit

Director Shekhar Kapur,who is teaming up with Hollywood star Julia Roberts and filmmaker Kevin Townsend for a biopic on British mountaineer George Mallory,says,“I receive half a dozen scripts in my office daily. But once I flipped through this one,I saw the potential.” Kapur has concluded discussions with the production team in London and Los Angeles ,though the title and the cast of the film haven’t been finalised.

Mallory was a part of the first three British expeditions to Mt Everest in the 1920s. During the third attempt,he,along with two climbers,disappeared in the mountain. “His death is still shrouded in mystery. Nobody knows whether he reached the summit successfully,” says Kapur,adding that he himself was an avid mountaineer during his younger days. The biopic,he adds,presents an opportunity to explore the deep relation between man and nature. “When a human being encounters immensity,he searches for ways to conquer that structure and discover his own individuality ,” says Kapur.

At present,he is busy with Paani,his futuristic film on the city of Mumbai which it is on the brink of a man-made disaster. He mentions in his blog: “Paani is a love story based in a city where the Water Wars have broken out between those that have water and those that do not”. The film has two songs by AR Rahman.