Mira Nair has signed on to direct the crime drama, Shantaram for Warner Bros. Pictures, Johnny Depp's Infinitum Nihil, Graham King's Initial Entertainment Group and Brad Pitt's Plan B.

Depp is also starring in the film based on the Gregory David Roberts novel; Eric Roth is adapting the screenplay. It focuses partly on the author's own adventures of an Australian heroin addict who escapes from a maximum-security prison and reinvents himself as a doctor treating the destitute in the slums of Bombay. Variety adds his drive to procure medicine leads him into counterfeiting, gun-running and smuggling.

Production on Shantaram is likely to begin as soon as this fall, with a possible 2008 release.

• Share
• Buzz It