Amritraj teams with Guru

LOS ANGELES: Producer Ashok Amritraj confirmed that he has teamed up with screenwriter Tracey Jackson to make an "Indian themed" romantic comedy for MGM Studios scheduled to be shot early 2004 in both India and the United States.
Though Tracey is still busy hammering out the script, the story will basically be about "a Jerry McGuire kind of a guy who lives above his means and through a series of circumstances meets and falls in love with an Indian girl," Amritraj said.
"At the heart of it, the story is a kind of or ."
Director Joel Zwick, who won critical and commercial success with the box office smash film, , is "very committed to the project and is very passionate about directing it," Amritraj added.
Jackson, who made her first visit to India 20 years ago as a guest of the maharaja of Jaipur and who is said to be working on several other Indian-themed films, approached Amritraj with the story idea, which he found irresistible.
"There are a lot of original ideas in the story, and the concept of a or a with an American guy and an Indian woman has never been done," he pointed out.
"I truly feel that Indian women today are extraordinarily beautiful and talented and can certainly be accepted by an American audience. The key is to find the emotional content of the movie so that it transcends culture and plays as a universal themed love story."
Now that they have teamed up, and because the city of Bangalore will feature largely as a location, "Tracey''s going to India for a couple of months to do some research," Amritraj added.