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Paul Schrader Says Film Starring Shah Rukh Khan & Leonardo DiCaprio Fell Apart: ‘SRK Was Reluctant to Play…’

At one point in time, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan rubbed shoulders with Hollywood legends, actor Leonardo DiCaprio and filmmaker Martin Scorsese. It was for a potential Hollywood collaboration titled Xtreme City. But the project never materialized. Recently, director Paul Schrader opened up about why the film was shelved and, according to him, Shah Rukh played a significant role in its undoing.

Schrader talked about the unfulfilled project while speaking on Pod Casty for Me. He said the trio – Khan, DiCaprio, and Scorsese – convened in Berlin to discuss the film. Scorsese was set to produce, while Khan had a pivotal role in the script. However, Schrader claimed that Khan’s enthusiasm waned over time, derailing the plan.

Speaking about the same, Schrader said, “Shah Rukh is the boss. He hires directors. Sometimes he hires multiple directors: he’ll hire somebody for the musical number; he’ll hire somebody else for the action; he’ll hire somebody else for the personal-relationship scenes. He can do that. He has never really worked under the harness of an auteur, and that, I could see, was starting to grate on him. And he had never done a film in the West before, and he had never been a second banana to somebody like Leo before.”

Meanwhile, the story of Xtreme City revolved around Khan’s character, a gangster, who found himself face-to-face with an American police officer, played by DiCaprio, after saving the officer’s life in India. Schrader shared the challenges he faced while trying to bring the script to life.

He said, “Bit-by-bit, I wrote the script. I went to Mumbai several times to see him and be with him – I could feel the ground slowly eroding underneath him. So finally his commitment was provisional, and then once his commitment went from ‘firm’ to ‘provisional,’ Leo’s went from ‘firm’ to ‘provisional.’ Now you have two ‘provisional’ commitments, which means you have no commitment at all.”

This wasn’t the first time Schrader expressed his desire to explore Bollywood-inspired storytelling. In a 2013 interview with Open, he mentioned how a trip to India had sparked his interest in blending Bollywood’s grandeur with international cinema. “I was intrigued about Bollywood for a brief period because I had flown to Delhi for a film festival and I had met some people there who asked me if I would like to work on a cross-cultural film… I just liked the idea of trying to combine an international movie with a Bollywood movie. I’m always interested in things that haven’t been done before,” he said.

Reflecting on why Xtreme City never happened, Schrader said, “It was really up to him, and I just got the feeling that he was never going to be comfortable doing an international film that he didn’t control.” He admitted that he didn’t believe Khan was fully onboard. Schrader even considered replacing Khan with another Bollywood superstar, Salman Khan. However, he decided against it, saying, “If SRK found that out, that would have killed it for SRK.”

Paul Schrader is celebrated for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese on iconic films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ. More recently, he has been lauded for his work on First Reformed and the Man In A Room trilogy. His latest endeavor is a project titled Oh, Canada.

See Also: Suhana Khan ‘Awestruck’ As Dua Lipa Performs Levitating x SRK’s Woh Ladki Jo Mashup At Mumbai Concert



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