In Mumbai, Steven Spielberg Talks Kashmir Project, MLK Film, 'Tintin' & Bond: Report

Steven Spielberg's international tour of newsy tidbits continues. Speaking to France's Canal Plus recently, the filmmaker dropped info about his development of a Napoleon miniseries based on a screenplay by Stanley Kubrick. Yesterday, Spielberg was in India to talk about Lincoln, meet with the local industry and attend a party hosted by Anil Ambani, the head of DreamWorks partner Reliance Entertainment. He also spoke to The Times Of India about a project that DreamWorks plans to make locally. 'We have finalized a script for a movie that DreamWorks and our partners Reliance Entertainment plan to make together. Part of it will take place on the India-Pakistan border in Kashmir. But we're still trying to figure out the casting, locations and who's going to direct it,' Spielberg told the paper. He also renewed talk of a long-gestating Martin Luther King project saying 'DreamWorks-Reliance is also planning a movie on Martin Luther King Jr. I wouldn't call it a biopic, it's more a story of King and the movement and also about how his admiration for Mahatma Gandhi helped to shape his moral core.' DreamWorks acquired the civil rights leader's life rights from the King Estate in 2009 and later set Ronald Harwood to pen a film. Scribe Kario Salem boarded the project in a 2011 incarnation for DreamWorks and Warner Bros.

Of the next Adventures Of Tintin movie, which Peter Jackson is directing, Spielberg said performance capture would start 'probably at the end of this year' Don't hold me to it, but we're hoping the film will come out around Christmastime in 2015.' And, in a Q&A session with local star Amitabh Bachchan, next seen in Baz Luhrmann's Cannes opener The Great Gatsby, Spielberg waxed on his earlier ambitions to make a James Bond movie. According to The Times, Spielberg said he twice offered to direct a 007 pic, but was turned down by producer Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli. 'I spoke to him after making Jaws, which was a huge hit, but Cubby said I wasn't experienced enough and they'd call me if they did a Bond film on water. After Close Encounters, I told him that by now I had two Oscar nominations. And he asked 'Did you win'? And I hadn't. So that was that.'

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