So what if Shah Rukh failed?

By Subhash K Jha

The cinematic fate of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka has passed on from Santosh and Shah Rukh to Santoshi and Ajay Devgan.

It looks like 2008 is going to witness a fierce battle of the historical warriors on the Indian screen.

While Sushmita Sen is all set to raise a sword to the Rani Of Jhansi in her international homage to the intrepid warrior queen, the epicurean epic maker Raj Kumar Santoshi who earlier cast Ajay Devgan as Bhagat Singh, is all set to now transform his favourite actor into the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka.

The film goes on the floors in early 2008 and will be jointly produced by Santoshi and the owners of the PVR chain of multiplexes.

Interestingly cinematographer-filmmaker Santosh Sivan had made a commercially unsuccessful film on the life of Emperor Ashoka entitled Asoka with Shah Rukh in the lead.

Says Santoshi, "I'm aware of Sivan's film. He's a fine craftsman. But my approach and treatment to this fascinating subject will be very different. My Ashoka will open during the Battle Of Kalinga and move forward into the Emperor's life and also recreate events pre-Kalinga through flashbacks.

Though he was born in 265 BC, today Emperor Ashoka's message of Buddhist peace at the time of terrible strife and war is more relevant than ever. I want my Ashoka to reach out to the young hip-and-happening generation. It won't be a costume drama like Mughal-e-Azam.

It will be a happening epic on the lines of Hollywood's Spartacus, Braveheart and Gladiator. Technicians from all over the world are now being finalized. "

Santoshi, a versatile epic maker with films as far- ranging as Ghayal and Lajja to his credit is toying with the idea making the film as a bi-lingual.

"Or maybe we could just have English subtitles to the Hindi dialogues since that would look more authentic, " Santoshi wonders aloud, as he prepares for the biggest challenge of his creatively fecund career.

The film will have no songs, but a background score by the "epic specialist" A R Rahman who has earlier done music in period films like Lagaan, Zubeida, JodhaA- Akbar and Santoshi's Legend Of Bhagat Singh.

This would be the second of the three historical-mythological characters that Santoshi is recreating with Devgan. After Bhagat Singh and Ashoka the creatively compatible combination moves into the Ramayan where Devgan plays Rama.

It would be interesting to see how Ajay Devgan interprets Emperor Ashoka after Shah Rukh Khan's rather peppery and mercurial enactment of the same historical character in 2001.