Mira Nair's eternal wait for Johnny Depp

The script is set and the cameras are ready to roll. Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair is now just waiting for Hollywood superstar Johnny Depp to give the green signal to her dream project Shantaram.

Depp, who is also producing the film, is set to play the lead in the movie which also has Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan.

The film adapted from Gregory David Roberts autobiographical novel by the same name tells the story of a fugitive Australian who lands in Mumbai and befriends the slum-dwellers and starts a free medical clinic.
   
However, he can't completely keep away from the crime world and after his stint with Mumbai prisons, he gets into laundering money and forging passports for a local don, Abdel Khader Khan, which is to be played by Bachchan in the film.

But Depp, who is set to start shooting Walt Disney's fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie by this June, is yet to take out time for Nair to star shooting.

"Not much is happening much on Shantaram front. The script is ready and we are ready to shoot. But its all dependent on Johnny Depp, whose also the producer, and we all know how successful and busy he is so whenever he is going to be free again and wants to do it that is when will it happen," Nair said.
   
The novel also takes the protagonist, who was named Shantaram by his admirers in Maharashtra, to Afghanistan to fight the Russians and later to Germany where he is arrested and starts a healing process after disturbing weeks in the prison.