Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray’s story is being adapted into a biopic by a senior leader of the party, according to a report in Hindustan Times.
To be made in Hindi and Marathi, the film will be produced by Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut, who is also the executive editor of the party’s mouthpiece, Saamna. Raut has written the story and screenplay of the film and said he plans to release it in 2019. Thackeray died in 2012.
“It will be a full-fledged commercial film produced by me. The film will reveal the true personality of the great leader that Balasaheb was,” Raut told the Press Trust of India.
The official announcement on the film will reportedly be made on December 21 in Mumbai. Amitabh Bachchan and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will be present at the event, according to the event invite.
Raut had previously conceptualised the 2015 Marathi movie Balkadu, which was based on Bal Thackeray’s ideology and was timed to be released on his birth anniversary on January 23.
Thackeray, a political cartoonist and journalist who founded Shiv Sena in 1966, has previously inspired the character of Mumbai strongman Subhash Nagre, played by Bachchan, in Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar trilogy.
“It is my dream project. It won’t be a documentary, but a feature film like the biopics on Mahatma Gandhi and [Nelson] Mandela,” Raut told Hindustan Times.
Earlier, Smita Thackeray, the estranged wife of the Thackeray’s son Jaidev, also announced a biopic on the leader but it is yet to get off the ground.
