Shah Rukh Khan shuts his eyes and imagines the moment of his own death. “My grandmother used to say that every time a flashbulb goes off in your face you lose three seconds of your life. Sometimes I think one day someone will just say: ‘Roll Camera, Action’ and I will drop dead, because all of my soul has been sucked out. That would be the best way to go.
“We have 1.2 billion people (in India) for God’s sake,” he says. “There is no threat. This question would never have been asked 15 years ago. The fact that it is being asked is a huge comment on how successful Bollywood has become. In terms of eyeballs, we are hugely visible. And we are very deeply rooted in the way we tell our stories. We are secretly very proud of the way we make our movies.”
If he has little interest in acting in Hollywood films, he does acknowledge a desire to collaborate with the big American studios to work on Indian films, something that is becoming a necessity as Bollywood productions become ever more lavish and expensive.
About his ultimate goal he says, is to make the mother of all Indian movies, an Avatar-style spectacular based on the Mahabharata, which he claims could be Bollywood’s first truly global blockbuster. That would cost much more, he says, probably only slightly less than the $450 million (approx. Rs 2,250 crore) spent on Avatar.
“I think it would be fantastic, the world’s greatest film,” he says. “It would be Mahabharata made like Lord of the Rings — a trilogy. The world would come to see it. The inherent story is one of the most interesting in the world. There are amazing superheroes, 20 times better than X-men — gods of the sun and wind who can make fire and gales at will. There are monsters, ghosts. It’s really awesome.”
Khan seems genuinely excited about the Mahabharata project, about which he has already held talks with Hollywood studios including 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers.
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