Dev Patel will be in the city next week to shoot a thriller based on the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 13, 2016)

On Tuesday, Armie Hammer, best known for his portrayal of the Winklevoss twins in David Fincher’s The Social Network filmed in South Mumbai till dawn. The American actor had landed in Mumbai five days ago with British co-star Jason Isaacs aka Harry Potter’s Lucius Malfoy to kick off the second schedule of Anthony Maras’s Hotel Mumbai.

Next Tuesday, they will be joined by Slumdog Millionaire’s Jamal Malik Dev Patel who is also the executive producer on the film. The 26-year-old actor is presently at the BFI London Film Festival where his next film, Lion, which also features Nicole Kidman and Rooney Mara, premiered on October 11. Incidentally, among the locations for his Mumbai portions in the film is the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus where he had shot the climax song of the Danny Boyle’s Oscar winning film nine years ago.

Hotel Mumbai’s screenplay, penned by John Collee and Anthony Maras, is based on Victoria Midwinter Pitt’s Emmy-winning 2009 documentary, Surviving Mumbai, a real-life account of the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai by a group of heavily-armed militants. For 68 hours, hundreds were held hostage inside the Taj Mahal Hotel — one of the target spots —as the terrorists and Indian security forces exchanged fire. When the smoke cleared, more than 160 people were dead and many more injured.

The film features Dev Patel as Arjun, a waiter at the hotel, Anupam Kher as ex Taj chef Hemant Oberoi, Armie Hammer and Iranian-American actress Nazanin Boniadi as a couple trapped in the hotel with their four-day baby. Twenty-two-year-old Australian actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey plays the baby’s nanny, Sally, while Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny actress Natasha Liu Bordizzo is another tourist.

“The first schedule wrapped up in August in Adelaide where the hotel was recreated. This schedule will be filmed over the next 40 days in South Mumbai as well as on a set in Film City. Most of the actors won’t be in the same frame together but everyone hang out over chicken tikkas and biryani between shots. The first schedule wrapped up with a bash at an Indian restaurant in Adelaide with the cast binging on desi khaana,” a source close to the development informed Mirror.

The Australian-American co-production is being directed by Anthony Maras, an Australian filmmaker best known for the award-winning thriller, The Palace, which followed a refugee family fleeing Turkish forces in Cyprus in 1974.

Subhash K Jha (DNA; October 3, 2016)


Hotel Mumbai recreates the ghastly incidents pertaining to the 26/11 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace & Hotel in Mumbai. Cast member Anupam Kher says, “We have already shot a large part of the film in Australia. Now, we shoot in Mumbai. This is my 501st film. It is one of the most important films of my career.”

Anupam is very pleased with the research undertaken by Maras and his team. Kher adds that the film will take a humane — rather than a political — view of the attack that shook Mumbai in 2008. “It’s sad but terror attacks are all about statistics we read in the newspaper. They happen so frequently that we have stopped reacting to them on a humane level. It’s about how many people died and we move on. This film changes that sense of detachment we’ve developed about terror attacks.”