It's a fantastic story: Shekhar Kapur

Ismat Tahseen

“I am making the film, the news is true,” says film-maker Shekhar Kapur speaking from Cannes on his new biopic on famed English explorer George Herbert Leigh Mallory.

It is to be produced by Hollywood actor Julia Roberts and film-maker Kevin Townsend.

Elaborating on the decision to have taken up such a subject, he adds, “I find it very exciting to be doing this as it’s a fantastic story.”

Mallory is known to have embarked on the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest way back in the 1920s. On the third expedition Mallory and his fellow climber, Andrew Irvine, both disappeared somewhere on the North-East ridge. The movie, set in post-WW1 England, chronicles Mallory’s attempts to scale the mountain and the toll it takes on his marriage as the mountain becomes his obsession.

It’s being produced by Roberts’ Red Om Films and Townsend’s Science + Fiction Townsend, mentions a news report.