Theater goers this week have pretty much three polarizing options this weekend. The manly “The Expendables,” the lady-fresh finding-yourself journey, “Eat Pray Love” or the geek-laden video-game kung-fu love story, “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.” You can probably guess where we stand.
We spoke with actor Satya Bhabha who plays evil-ex boyfriend #1 Matthew Patal in the Edgar Wright-directed film and while talking ‘Pilgrim,’ Bhabha also revealed that he’s working with Toronto filmmaker Deepa Mehta (“Heaven on Earth”) and celebrated author Salman Rushdie on an adaptation of his 1981 novel, “Midnight’s Children.” The project was announced earlier this year, and Bhabba said the project will hopefully be shooting before the end of the year.
“Midnight’s Children” arguably launched Rushdie’s career a good eight years before you heard about “The Satanic Verses” and was taught what a fatwa meant. The young actor will be playing the lead as well. “I play Saleem [Sinai] in that. I’m learning a little Hindhi and I’ll have magical powers in the film as well, it’s a theme,” he joked referencing the somewhat magical powers his character has in ‘Scott Pilgrim.’
Rushdie’s novel is a historical chronicle of modern India centering on the inextricably linked fates of two children born within the first hour of independence from Great Britain. The Saleem character has telepathic powers and acts as a conduit that bringing hundreds of geographically disparate children into contact. He also has an extraordinarily big nose that is constantly dripping.
Exactly at midnight on Aug. 15, 1947, two boys are born in a Bombay hospital, where they are switched by a nurse. Saleem Sinai, who will be raised by a well-to-do Muslim couple, is actually the illegitimate son of a low-caste Hindu woman and a departing British colonist. Shiva, the son of the Muslim couple, is given to a poor Hindu street performer whose unfaithful wife has died. Saleem represents modern India. When he is 30, he writes his memoir, Midnight’s Children. Shiva is destined to be Saleem’s enemy as well as India’s most honored war hero. This multilayered novel places Saleem in every significant event that occurred on the Indian subcontinent in the 30 years after independence.
Bhabha will be seen next in Doug Liman’s “Fair Game” alongside Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, which hits theaters November 5. – reporting by Drew Morton