Angelina Films for ‘The Mighty Heart’ in Pune

Hollywood superstars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt arrived in the
western Indian city of Pune early October2006, for the filming of
A Mighty Heart; the film based on the 2003 book A Mighty
Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl,
by Mariane Pearl.

The story of the film is based in Karachi, the city in Pakistan
from where the journalist Daniel Pearl lived and was abducted before
being killed. But the project could not be filmed there due to security
reasons and Jolie said in a statement that she was disappointed
not to be filming in Pakistan, "a country I love and have visited
three times." But security concerns pushed the filming to the
western Indian city of Pune, where the location for the filming
was chosen because of its closest resemblance to the Karachi locality
where Marianne spent a month from the day she learnt of Pearl’s
kidnapping till he was beheaded by his abductors.

In the film, Jolie plays Mariane, widow of the Wall Street Journal
reporter, who was murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002 while
researching a story on the links between "shoe bomber"
Richard Reid and Islamic spiritual leader Sheikh Mubarak Gilani.
Mariane was pregnant with their child when her husband was kidnapped.

Dan Futterman, who wrote the screenplay to last year’s Capote,
plays Daniel Pearl, according to Paramount Vantage, which is producing
the movie with Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company. The film is
scheduled for release in 2007.

Photo: Skyline of Pune Camp Area by Ganesh Dhamodkar, licensed under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.