Producer-director Shashi Ranjan is all set to collaborate with Pakistani producer Syma Khar’s on the Indo-Pak film Mungilal Rrocks.
Ranjan will direct the comedy and has Boman Irani and Satish Shah in mind for the key roles. “I haven’t finalised casting though. It will be all done in a week’s time. I want to cast both from India and Pakistan,” he says.
Ranjan’s last film Dobaara (Jackie Shroff and Mahima Chaudhary) was about relationships, and he says he was looking to directing something exciting and big with Salman Khan. “But he’s too tied up so I thought of this film. And given the current scenario it didn’t seem right to do a film with him.
Coming to Mungilal Rrocks, I always wanted to carry forward Indo-Pak relations through films and music. Pakistan is a huge market for Indian films and music and culturally we are twins. I think we need to just keep the thing going so we can strengthen our relationship by making films and music together,” says Ranjan.
The director wants to cast Irani as Mungilal. As for whether he will rock or not, he says, “It was my daughter’s idea to name it Mungilal Rrocks. You know the current generation uses words like ‘rocking’ and ‘amazing’ to describe just about anything and everything so I thought why not make my protagonist rock too.”
Ranjan wants to start shooting in June. “We will shoot a couple of songs in Islamabad because it’s a beautiful city, I have been there quite a few times. We will also shoot in India, Dubai and Mauritius. I want to use some Pakistani compositions.”
The film is slated for a summer 2007 release.