Kamal or Sanjay to play Osho?

Almost two decades after his death, controversial preacher Osho is to be resurrected in a film on his life. Kamal Haasan and Sanjay Dutt are being considered to play the main lead.

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Italian film director Antonino Lakshen Sucameli, an Osho disciple himself, is in talks with production companies in both India and abroad as well as senior Indian actors to resume work on Osho: The Film, which was conceptualised more than five years ago. The 54-year-old director is in India to hold talks with Kamal Haasan and Sanjay Dutt, an associate in Nepal said. "The shooting will start by next year," Swami Rishi from Osho Tapoban, Kathmandu said. "Part of the film will be shot in India."

When Sucameli, known for his mystic films Blue Line and Zorba Il Buddha, began work on the script, Kabir Bedi and Irrfan Khan were also approached to act in it. The director is still looking for a Hollywood actress to play Clara, the journalist through whose eyes the mesmerising and turbulent life of Osho will unfold.

Inspired by Bertolucci's Little Buddha and Oliver Stone's JFK, Sucameli plans to weave videos of Osho in his film.

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Osho was born Chandra Mohan Jain in Madhya Pradesh in 1931 and in the 1970s established himself as a new age guru advocating a luxurious life-style as well as experimental therapies that combined sex with violence. When Clara arrives in the ashram to investigate Osho's life, including his deportation from the US in 1985, she falls in love with his Indian security chief Satyam, and an East-West love story punctuated by flashbacks from India's colonial past forms the core of the film. Sucameli met Osho in 1978 when he arrived in India and soon became his disciple.

Osho's sensational life has attracted other filmmakers as well. In 2006, an Indian company, Media One Venture of Chandigarh, had announced its plan to make a film, Guru of Sex with Sir Ben Kingsley as Osho.