Despite his rather carefree appearance at an entertainment conference in Mumbai, Ashok Amritraj says he is battling a severe case of nerves.In three weeks, his movie, Walking Tall starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Johnny Knoxville and Ashley Scott will hit the US box-office. Walking Tall opens on April 2 in over 3,000 screens.
While Amritraj is keeping his fingers crossed that Walking Tall will go the way of his last movie, Bringing Down The House (starring Steve Martin and Queen Latifah), which grossed over $ 130 million, he is looking at other projects.
Amritraj has bought the rights to two comic strips, Mandrake, The Magician and Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks.
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He hopes to start filming Mandrake by the end of this year or early next year, though the cast for it has not yet been finalised. 'It will definitely be someone big in Hollywood who will play Mandrake," promises Amritraj. As for Phantom, he says, that the project is still in a 'development stage'.
"Branded titles have become the order of the day in Hollywood. By branded title, I mean a hit novel, a known comic book or popular video games or even good foreign films. Hollywood now wants to make movies based on these," says Amritraj who is in Mumbai currently to attend the FICCI-Frames 2004 conference.
A former tennis pro, Amritraj quit tennis to become a movie producer and turned out his first movie in 1984. His first big hit was Double Impact in 1991 which starred Jean Claude Van Damne.
Amritraj says that he is also desperately searching for an Indian girl to star in a movie that plans to make. The film is a love story between a girl working in a call centre in India and an American guy.
"I am still searching for an Indian girl. But I haven't found her yet," he says.
Amritraj wants to start shooting for the film in the next few months and is desperate to find his leading girl.
Meanwhile, he will keep an eye at the US box-office where the fortune of his upcoming release will be decided next month.
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