“Top of the Lake” helmer to direct “Shantaram” hit novel adaptation

PanARMENIAN.Net - Garth Davis is in early talks to direct Shantaram, Warner Bros.' Johnny Depp-produced adaptation of the Gregory David Roberts book, The Hollywood Reporter said.

Joel Edgerton is attached to star in the tale, which centers on an Australian heroin addict convicted of robbery escapes from a maximum-security prison who flees to India and reinvents himself as a doctor in the slums of Bombay. He then gets involved in counterfeiting, smuggling and gunrunning, which leads him to Afghanistan, where he and a mob boss battle Russians. Eric Roth wrote the most recent draft of the script.

Depp is producing with his partner, Christi Dembrowski. Also in the pool of producers is Graham King. Sarah Schechter is overseeing.

Davis was nominated for an Emmy this year for his work directing half of Jane Campion’s Sundance Channel miniseries Top of the Lake.

“In 1978, gifted student and writer Greg Roberts turned to heroin when his marriage collapsed, feeding his addiction with a string of robberies. Caught and convicted, he was given a nineteen-year sentence. After two years, he escaped from a maximum-security prison, spending the next ten years on the run as Australia's most wanted man.

Hiding in Bombay, he established a medical clinic for slum-dwellers, worked in the Bollywood film industry and served time in the notorious Arthur Road prison. He was recruited by one of the most charismatic branches of the Bombay mafia for whom he worked as a forger, counterfeiter, and smuggler, and fought alongside a unit of mujaheddin guerrilla fighters in Afghanistan. His debut novel, Shantaram, is based on this ten-year period of his life in Bombay. The result is an epic tale of slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison torture, mafia gang wars and Bollywood films. A gripping adventure story, Shantaram is also a superbly written meditation on good and evil and an authentic evocation of Bombay life,” a synopsis published in Powell’s Books says.