When we almost had Shah Rukh Khan and Leonardo Dicpario in the same movie

Forget about Avengers Endgame or Barbie, the biggest movie ever….never got made. Two of the greatest actors this generation has seen, Shah Rukh Khan and Leonardo DiCaprio, were once about to come together to give us the most incredible thriller film of our lives.

Back in 2011, the Bollywood Badshah had signed on the film ‘Xtreme City’. A picture, purportedly a fan-made poster, broke the internet. Featuring Khan, DiCaprio, Karan Johar, the film was supposed to be produced by the legendary Martin Scorsese with Paul Schrader directing, and Mushtaq Sheikh writing. The film was suppose to pit Khan and DiCaprio against each other.

Sheikh gushed about the once-in-a-lifetime powerful collaboration with NDTV, calling it “the best news I’ve heard in a long time”.

“We are all elated. This is the best news I have heard in a long time. Martin loved the script and it meant the world to me as the writer of the film along with Paul Schrader. But when he comes in as the producer of the project, then I am thrilled as it takes the film to another level completely. Inshaallah, all goes well from here onwards. Fingers and all parts of the body crossed.”

In a 2011 interview with Press Trust of India, Sheikh described the plot of the film as one where “both Indian and American protagonists are balanced human beings”:

“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, this will be an attempt at true global entertainment.”

However the project couldnt take off because both actors weren’t as committed to the project to continue it, and in an interview with Open Magazine, Schrader revealed that Shah Rukh wasn’t comfortable with doing a film he couldn’t control:

“Well, in the end, I don’t think Shah Rukh wanted to make it. It was really up to him, and I just got the feeling that he was never going to be comfortable doing an international film that he didn’t control. 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. We did have a script, which was a hundred per cent paid for. We also had a meeting with SRK and Leo in Berlin, but neither of them actually ever committed. There was a lot of waiting—maybe they were waiting for each other to commit, but it never quite happened.”

Shah Rukh Khan has also candidly discussed why he chose not to follow the path of other actors like Irrfan Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone, to star in a Hollywood movie, while speaking in 2008 at the Berlin Film Festival.

 “My English is not good, if they give me a role of a dumb person who doesn’t speak, maybe then there’s a possibility. I am not trying to be modest, I am 42 years old. I am a little brown. I don’t have any USP as an actor, I don’t have any specialty. I don’t know Kung Fu, I don’t dance salsa, and I am not tall enough…I have seen the recent European films, there is no place for me there, no space for me. I don’t think am talented enough. Instead, I would like to continue working in India and take Indian cinema to the world.”

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