Dustin Hoffman vs John!

By Subhash K Jha

After Rachel Weisz, it's another Hollywood biggie for John Abraham in Deepa Mehta's much talked-about project environment-friendly Luna.

The environment is indeed getting very friendly for John. Even as he left for Pondicherry to shoot for Nagesh Kukunoor's Aashayen he has more international connections to look forward to.

After getting himself cast as the ravishing Rachel's activist boyfriend in Luna, it's the formidable Dustin Hoffman who joins the cast as the main antgonist in the pull-and-push proceedings between the environmentalists and the industrial caucus.

Confirming this ingenious casting Deepa says, "My producers Warner Brothers are in the final negotiations with Dustin Hoffman to play the head of the timber mafia. He'll play the chief of the lumber company against whom Julia Hill took a stand in 1997 by undertaking a two-year 'tree-sit.'

Deepa is excited by the prospect of bringing together two actors of such varied talents as Hoffman and Abraham in the same screen space. "But for me, more exciting is the prospect of directing Mr Bachchan in Exclusion. That's my big dream.

Not that I intend to give any less of myself to Luna. I'm deeply excited about it. And I intend to start shooting by the end of June," says the director whose much-discussed Water opened last weekend in the UK, just behind the big Hollywood spectacle Pirates Of The Caribbean at the boxoffice.

"I'm truly surprised by the fact that a year after its release Water still makes such an impact. The UK boxoffice and reviews are unbelievable," says Deepa.

Now the director leaves for the IFFA where she'll attend a special symposium on cinema chaired by Jaya Ba

chchan. "My mother who was grieving for my father's death has just gone back to Delhi," Deepa says softly from her home in Toronto. "This tragedy has brought us so much closer. "

And yes, one of these days Deepa will script a film on the mother-daughter relationship.