Vinod Chopra's ambitious project Taalismaan, based on Devaki Nandan Khatri's Chandrakanta has been shelved.
The film, which was to be directed by Ram Madhvani, was announced with much fanfare and was to go on floors this year. In fact, a trailer of the film featuring Amitabh Bachchan in a battle-field, ready for war, was cut a year ago.
The director claims that the film is a no-go because of the weak script. However, the industry is abuzz with speculation that Chopra's vision of an epic adventure fantasy was not financially feasible.
Our source told us, "Taalismaan was planned as the ultimate experience. But many things happened in the interim. It started with James Cameron's Avatar and then Shah Rukh Khan's RA.One, which has taken over the super-hero action-adventure fantasy space.
And now Salman Khan too is dabbling with this genre in Sher Khan. All in all it just seemed impractical to go ahead with Taalismaan."
When contacted, director Madhvani said, "We worked on the project for two years. But the script just didn't gel. It was not as dynamic as we'd have liked.
Rather than go ahead with a flawed script, I decided to tell Vinod that the project should be shelved. To his credit he took it well and agreed that we abort the project, while there was time."
The film, which was to be directed by Ram Madhvani, was announced with much fanfare and was to go on floors this year. In fact, a trailer of the film featuring Amitabh Bachchan in a battle-field, ready for war, was cut a year ago.
The director claims that the film is a no-go because of the weak script. However, the industry is abuzz with speculation that Chopra's vision of an epic adventure fantasy was not financially feasible.
Our source told us, "Taalismaan was planned as the ultimate experience. But many things happened in the interim. It started with James Cameron's Avatar and then Shah Rukh Khan's RA.One, which has taken over the super-hero action-adventure fantasy space.
And now Salman Khan too is dabbling with this genre in Sher Khan. All in all it just seemed impractical to go ahead with Taalismaan."
When contacted, director Madhvani said, "We worked on the project for two years. But the script just didn't gel. It was not as dynamic as we'd have liked.
Rather than go ahead with a flawed script, I decided to tell Vinod that the project should be shelved. To his credit he took it well and agreed that we abort the project, while there was time."
