When Shah Rukh Khan almost worked with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese
The godfather of gangster flicks, filmmaker Martin Scorsese, is known for pulling together some truly extraordinary casts, with almost each and every one of his films boasting a baffling range of actors. Perhaps best of all was the ensemble he managed to amass for the 2013 movie The Wolf of Wall Street, which included such glittering Hollywood names as Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Cristin Milioti and Jon Favreau.
Whilst he often operates in the realms of Hollywood cinema, Scorsese isn’t bound to its limitations, making such movies as Kundun in 1997, which starred a handful of non-professional actors, as well as having produced 2018s Happy as Lazzaro with Adriano Tardiolo, among others. In fact, back in 2011, Scorsese was close to collaborating with one of the most celebrated international stars, Shah Rukh Khan.
Bringing together the best minds from across the globe of cinema, Khan met up with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese during the 2011 Berlin Film Festival to discuss the possibility of a brand new crime film entitled Xtreme City. Due to be produced by Scorsese and co-written by Taxi Driver’s Paul Schrader and Bollywood’s Mushtaq Shiekh, the action thriller was due to take the world by storm.
Speaking about the project at the time, Shiekh told PTI: “It’s a different kind of film, one where both Indian and American protagonists are balanced human beings, and the story treats them in their full complexity without either culture being diminished or taken for granted. It’s a cross-cultural thriller designed for both Bollywood and Hollywood. And if we get it right, (then) this will be an attempt at true global entertainment”.
Sadly for fans of Khan, Scorsese, DiCaprio and world cinema in general, the project never got off the ground, and Xtreme City was left to cinematic obscurity. Quite why the film failed to get going is shrouded in mystery, but Schrader provided some answers in an interview back in 2013.
Speaking with Open The Magazine, Schrader claimed that it was Shah Rukh Khan who didn’t want to kickstart the project. Speaking about the unrealised movie, the screenwriter stated, “…Just got the feeling that he was never going to be comfortable doing an international film that he didn’t control”.
Continuing, he added, “You know that everything SRK does, he has total control over? So if he did something like this at an international level, he wouldn’t have that control. I think in the end he wasn’t that comfortable not being a hundred per cent in control”.
This hasn’t stopped fans online from creating their own impression of what the movie might have looked like if it ever saw the light of day. Check out a fan-made trailer of Xtreme City, below.
