Action at the 69th Cannes Film Festival is in full swing. The Dev Patel-Armie Hammer starrer Hotel Mumbai, a film based on the 2008 terror attacks Mumbai’s Taj Mahal hotel, just got acquired by Weinstein Co (Rights for UK and North America).
Hotel Mumbai is set to go into production in August in India and Australia. Patel also is on board as an executive producer. John Collee and Anthony Maras have written the film’s screenplay, which is loosely based on the Emmy-nominated documentary Surviving Mumbai.
Hotel Mumbai is a real life drama and will depict the harrowing account of the terrorist attack on the iconic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, by a group of heavily armed Pakistani militants. For 68 hours, hundreds were held hostage as shots rang out and an enormous fire raged. When the smoke cleared, more than 160 people were dead in total as a result of the attacks and many more injured. Only the courageous actions of staff and guests prevented a much higher death toll in the hotel itself.
I’m thrilled to be working with Dev Patel again having had a great experience on Lion. He’s an artist with great integrity and I’m super excited to work with Nazanin Boniadi and Arnie Hammer. I saw Anthony Maras’s short, The Palace, and was captivated. Hotel Mumbai plans to be a big part of our Oscar plans next year.Harvey Weinstein, Film Producer (as reported by Deadline)
The deal reunites Patel with Weinstein after working together recently on Garth David’s much-buzzed about Lion, the true story of five-year-old Indian boy, who gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilo-meters from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)