EXCLUSIVE: BAFTA-winning Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) is ready to direct Overseas Our bodies, a historic drama biopic about vaccine pioneer and bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine.
Haffkine, little identified to most of the people, was the Ukrainian-Jewish scientist whose work on cholera and plague vaccines within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries helped save tens of millions of lives. The British Raj appointed Haffkine as their State Bacteriologist in India, however falsely accused him of killing nineteen individuals from tetanus in what turned generally known as “the Second Dreyfus Affair.”
Set throughout Odesa, Paris, London, Mumbai and Kolkata, the movie “will comply with Haffkine, an excellent outsider, as he’s formed by persecution, exile and private loss, however who repeatedly dangers his personal physique and repute in pursuit of scientific reality.”
The challenge is being produced by Helen Hadfield of Snapper Movies, Alexandra Stone of Streetcar Productions, Egor Olesov of United Heroes, and J.D. Zacharias of Curiosity Rights.
Casting discussions are underway with producers presently on the bottom on the Cannes market to debate the movie with potential companions.
The screenplay comes from British screenwriter Paul Twivy, who has spent the previous three years unearthing Haffkine’s story and had entry to household information.
Kapur, director of seven-time Oscar nominee Elizabeth, its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Cannes entry Bandit Queen, instructed Deadline: “Overseas Our bodies is a large-scale character drama a couple of man caught on the intersection of epidemic, empire, prejudice and religion. It is a story of such epic scale, but of such private and inner battle, of a person who saved tens of millions of lives, changing into each worshiped as a God and reviled because the satan. It has a love story that transcends cultural battle and is heart-warming and heart-breaking on the identical time. In one other time and one other context, however in its epic nature, this movie reminds of Lawrence of Arabia.”
Twivy commented: “Shekhar’s extraordinary talent and perception when directing biopics reminiscent of Elizabeth, makes him an ideal match for a narrative that blends in-depth character research with scientific discovery, romantic obsession and sweeping historic upheaval.”