Nair near finalizing cast for 'Reluctant Fundamentalist'; "meaty roles" being negotiated with "serious A-list" US talent (SCR)

By Nancy Tartaglione

Mira Nair is in the final stages of casting for her next feature, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist," Screen reports from Doha.

The director quashed Indian press rumors that she had cast Bollywood hotshot Shahid Kapoor as her lead and instead said that she has a "final list of four young men who are all brilliant. Two are in Pakistan, and the other two are from England." She added that "there are three other very meaty substantial roles to be played by Americans, those are being negotiated now with seriously A-list talent."

Per Screen, the film is adapted from Mohsin Hamid's 2007 novel about a Pakistani man who is talking with an American stranger in a Lahore cafe, telling him about his life as a rising star on Wall Street who becomes disenchanted after the 9-11 attacks. The dialogue will be about 80% in English and 20% in Urdu.

"It's an elegant cat and mouse thriller about perception and about how 'we' are seen by 'them' and how 'they' are seen by 'us'," Nair told Screen. "It's about his love affair with America and how it begins to change."

Nair is working with her longtime producer Lydia Dean Pilcher to produce the film via their companies Mirabai Films and Cine Mosaic.