Fox Star Studios is to produce Bombay Velvet, the biggest budget film to date by polymath Indian film-maker Anurag Kashyap.
The period film is the first in a trilogy about the development of Mumbai and is a partial ...展开adaptation of historian Gyan Prakash's book Mumbai Fables.
Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma will star as onscreen lovers in the Mumbai of 1950s. Production is expected to start in July with release on 25 Dec 2014.
The film is produced through Phantom Films, one of many labels involving the prolific Kashyap, who is involved in different ways with all four Indian films in this year's Cannes festival. Fox Star Studios is the production and distribution unit formed in India by News Corp's Star TV subsidiary and Fox International Productions.
Phantom also involves director Vikramaditya Motwane, producer Madhu Mantena and former UTV executive Vikas Bahl. It was the production company behind Ugly, the thriller that Kashyap directed and which appears in Directors' Fortnight.
"Bombay Velvet is intricately researched and beautifully fictionalised by Anurag as to how one of the greatest cities of the world was created amidst loads of action, romance, pain and huge drama," said Bahl in a prepared statement.
"Anurag Kashyap is at the same time both avant garde filmmaker and commercial Bollywood movie maker rolled into one. We are thrilled to be working with him and this extraordinary cast," said Sanford Panitch, president of FIP.
Kapoor, co-star of India's most recent foreign language Oscar contender Barfi, is widely tipped as the country's biggest rising male star. Sharma recently starred in 2012 hit Jab Tak Hai Jaan.
Indian media has previously indicated that the budget of the film is some $20 million, though that is a figure that Kashyap has never confirmed.
"Bombay Velvet is my first film in a trilogy about Bombay, before it became a metropolis. It's a story that has always fascinated me and we have been developing it for about four years, and I am very excited that now its fully ready and we begin shoot this year," said Kashyap.