Kamal Haasan to play Osho? Or Sanjay Dutt?

Almost two decades after his death in his ashram in Pune, charismatic yet controversial preacher “Bhagwan Rajneesh” – also dubbed the “Guru of Sex” due to his advocacy of free sex – is to be resurrected in a film on his life and actors like Sanjay Dutt and Kamal Haasan from the Indian film industry are being considered to play the main lead.

Italian film director Antonino Lakshen Sucameli, an Osho disciple himself, is in talks with production companies in both India and abroad as well as senior Indian actors to resume work on “Osho: The Film”, which was conceptualised more than five years ago.

The 54-year-old, who was in Nepal this month to attend a course at the Osho Tapoban in Kathmandu, is now back in India to hold talks with powerful Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan and Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, an associate in Nepal said.

“The shooting will start by next year,” Swami Rishi from Osho Tapoban, Kathmandu told IANS. “Part of the film will be shot in India.”

When Sucameli, known for his mystic films “Blue Line” and “Zorba Il Buddha”, began work on the script, Kabir Bedi and Irrfan Khan were also approached to act in it. The director is still looking for a Hollywood actress to play Clara, the journalist through whose eyes the mesmerising – as well as turbulent – life of Osho will unfold.

Inspired by Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK”, Sucameli plans to weave in his film videos on Osho, who was born Chandra Mohan Jain in Madhya Pradesh in 1931 and in the 1970s established himself as a new age guru advocating a luxurious life-style as well as experimental therapies that combined sex with violence.

When Clara arrives in the ashram to investigate Osho’s life, including his deportation from the US in 1985, she falls in love with his Indian security chief Satyam, and an East-West love story punctuated by flashbacks from India’s colonial past forms the core of the film.

Sucameli met Osho in 1978 when he arrived in India and became his disciple.

Osho’s sensational life has attracted other filmmakers as well. In 2006, an Indian company, Media One Venture of Chandigarh, had announced plan to make a film, “Guru of Sex” that was to have cast Sir Ben Kingsley as Osho.