BOLLYWOOD star Amitabh Bachchan will appear in his first Hollywood film alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in a new adaptation of classic novel “The Great Gatsby”, Warner Bros. Pictures said on Tuesday (September 6).
The 68-year-old star of 1970s hits Sholay (Sparks) and Deewaar (Wall) joins DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan in Australian director Baz Luhrmann`s version of the 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Warner Bros. Pictures said in a statement that shooting had started this week and Bachchan will play Meyer Wolfsheim, a shadowy organised crime figure who helps the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby make his money.
Bachchan was in Australia last month, where most of the filming will take place, but he did not disclose on his daily blog whether the trip was to finalise his appearance.
Instead, he wrote cryptically on August 29 as he was about to return to India: “Time has been spent well and hopefully judiciously. Days ahead will tell us whether it was fruitful or not.”
The “Big B”, who still has a fanatical following in India and among fans of Hindi-language cinema abroad, has starred in some 150 Bollywood films. In 2008, he released his first English-language film, The Last Lear.
In the new Gatsby, DiCaprio plays the lead role of Jay Gatsby, while Britain’s Mulligan plays his lover, Carraway’s cousin, Daisy Buchanan.
Maguire, star of the “Spider-Man” franchise, plays Nick Carraway, a would-be writer and the narrator of the novel, who comes to New York from the US Midwest in 1922 to make his fortune.
The film is due for release next year, according to the imdb.com website.
