Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children movie version soon; Shabana Azmi

Deepa Mehta is planning to adapt Salman Rushdie’s Booker-winning novel Midnight’s Children for a movie version. Deepa Mehta has directed movies like Earth, Fire, and Water, will direct Midnight’s Children. Acclaimed actress Shabana Azmi will have a role in the movie.

Deepa will co-produce the movie with husband David Hamilton.

Deepa Mehta will direct Rushdie' Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta will work on the screenplay, which is likely to run over 600 pages. Midnight’s Children that will go into production in 2010, is likely to star Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, and Seema Biswas. Azmi has earlier worked with Mehta on the controversial Fire (1998). Nandita Das has worked with Deepa Mehta in both Earth and Fire (1998).

Nandita Das and Shabana Azmi in Fire

Salman Rushdie has said that he would love to cast Shabana Azmi as the grandmother’s character in the film.

Salman Rushdie and Mehta will write the screenplay from mid-March to mid-April 2009.

Midnight’s Children revolves around Saleem Sinai, one of the 1,001 children born between 12 AM and 1 AM on August 15, 1947.

Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981.

Sir Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie has earlier adapted Midnight’s Children for a play and a TV series. The TV series never took off because the Sri Lanka government refused to give the go-ahead to shoot the series.

Deepa Mehta will first film Exclusion, in 2009, and then start production for Midnight’s Children. Exclusion is about the Komagata Maru episode when 300 Indians were denied entry into Canada. Exclusion will star John Abraham, Akshay Kumar, Manisha Koirala, and Seema Biswas.

Midnight’s Children will be filmed in India, though going by Deepa Mehta’s record with shooting problems in India, it may not be easy to do so. While making Water, Mehta had to stop filming due to violent protests. Mehta then secretly shot the movie in Sri Lanka.

The Midnight’s Children project was announced by Rushdie and Mehta in New York at an event organised a day after the annual MIAAC film festival.