Midnight’s Children the much-feted novel by author Salman Rushdie is soon to be made into a feature film by none other than the famed Indian Hollywood director, Deepa Mehta.

The book is a fictional work about Saleem who was born on the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 just as Indian tricolour was replacing British flag. His story encompasses the history of India from Independence until end of emergency in 1977.

Well-known film star Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das, who had acted in Mehta’s earlier critically acclaimed but controversial movies including ‘Fire’ and ‘Earth’, will have major roles in the movie and the rest of the cast is still being finalized. Azmi will play the role of the grand mother.

Mehta and Rushdie announced the project in New York at an event organized a day after the annual MIAAC film festival kicked off November 5 in New York with the screening of Mehta’s Heaven on Earth.

Rushdie and Mehta will together write the screenplay and collaborate on all other aspects of the movie, which they expect to be released sometime in 2010. They plan to begin work on it spring next year.

Mehta would take up the Midnight\’s Children project only after the completion of her big budget film Komagata Maru. “And that suits me, too,” Rushdie said. “I will be working on a sequel to my children’s book Haroun and The Sea of Stories.

The two have set an ambitious deadline of releasing the film in 2010.

“I am delighted that my friend Deepa Mehta has agreed to make the film of Midnight’s Children,” Rushdie told a news agency. “Her passion for the book, combined with her immense talent as a filmmaker, means that my novel has been placed in the best possible hands. I also look forward to working with her on the screen play.”

One of the reasons he is passionate about the film project is because of its endearing appeal the novel has, he said.
“It has absolutely refused to go away,” he said of the Booker Prize winner, which he began writing 31 years ago, and had it published four years later.
It was declared the Booker of Bookers last year.