IT’S not a Hollywood production, but a movie about missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is already in the works and could be in theatres within months.
Rupesh Paul Productions is promoting The Vanishing Act, a film about the plane tragedy, among buyers at the Cannes Film Festival.
A poster for the movie promises to tell “the untold story” of the missing plane, but in an interview Friday, the associate director of the movie, Sritama Dutta, said the only similarities between the thriller and the real-life disaster is that a plane is missing.
“It has got no similarities,” said Dutta, adding there have been so many developments with the actual case that it wouldn’t be practical to try to mirror it.
“We cannot keep up with the true facts, it’s changing every day.”
However the 90-second trailer for the film, posted to YouTube yesterday, features a cast of terrified passengers aboard a turbulent MAS jetliner and recreates some of the dramatic scenarios that could have played out on board the ill-fated flight after takeoff.
Dutta said Indian director Rupesh Paul will film the movie and a multiethnic cast for it could be revealed before Cannes ends May 25.
Paul presented the film idea to financiers with the teaser trailer on Saturday afternoon, according to Variety .
Paul told the magazine that he spent 20 days working on a screenplay based around a Malaysian journalist’s theory about what happened to the plane.
He said the journalist, who insists on anonymity for now, is one of the film’s investors. The film’s budget is about $3.5 million.
The trailer for the partly fictional film was shot over six days in an Aerobus parked in Mumbai, India.
Shooting the film will take 35 days and involve more than 200 actors.
Paul hopes to shoot the film in India and the United States and plans a worldwide release in September.
His erotic movie “Kamasutra 3D” is being screened outside the Cannes competition this year.
His personal website says Paul “redefines all-round talent” and “his free spirit has been prized and puzzled by many.”
Within weeks of MH370 disappearing Australian film Deep Water, about a plane that crashes into the ocean on its way from China, was shelved because of its resemblance to the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
The Hollywood Reporter stated Deep Water, a follow-up to Bait 3D, had been put on hold because of “uncomfortable similarities” to the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
“Out of sensitivity to the Malaysia flight situation, we’ve decided to put it on pause for now,” Gary Hamilton, managing director of Arclight Films told hollywoodreporter.com in March
The news from Cannes comes as the first book about the aviation disaster is set to hit bookshelves tomorrow, Fairfax reports.
Just over 10 weeks after the plane went missing, “Flight MH370: The Mystery” by author and journalist Nigel Cawthorne, will go on sale Monday.
American aviation author Christine Negroni, wrote Deadly Departure on TWA Flight 800, is also working on a book about the missing Malaysian flight, called Crashed, which will be published by Penguin.
Authorities still have not been able to locate Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which was carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 when it went missing. The search for the plane has made headlines worldwide.
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