The Making of ‘Shantaram': How the Apple Thriller Fell Through Johnny Depp’s Grasp and Into the Leading Arms of Charlie Hunnam

thewrap.com:

‘We’ve Just Hit Pause for the Moment’“Because of what’s going on with the writers strike and everything, we’ve put the movie on, basically on pause,” Depp said in a 2007 interview with India’s NDTV as he promoted the Tim Burton-directed “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” six months after the release of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” the Disney franchise’s third installment. “We’ve just hit pause for the moment to see how everything goes with the writers strike,” Depp said. “Mira’s work with Eric Roth has been amazing.

And I think they’re getting close to something very very, nearly perfect. But with the writers strike, you need to be, make sure everything is — you’ve got all your ducks in a row.”Asked if the film would be shot on location in Bombay, Depp said it would, that “there would be no place to replicate that.”“It would have to be in that area, in Bombay, and I think there’s nobody better than Mira to capture that,” Depp said. “She has a real strong feel for the place, obviously.”Nair, who had called it a “piece of my heart,” then fell off “Shantaram,” later saying the script was brilliant and was “in a way ready to go” but that the project had collapsed after Depp took on other work amid the Hollywood writers strike.

For Depp, “Public Enemies” (2009), “Alice in Wonderland” (2010), “The Tourist” (2010) the fourth “Pirates” movie (2011) and his second Hunter S.

Thompson passion project, “The Rum Diary” (2011), awaited. But “Shantaram” wasn’t dead. With Warner Bros. still holding the rights they paid $2 million for, Joel Edgerton was in 2013 enlisted to play the lead role of Dale Conti, aka Lin Ford, with Depp returning to produce.