Ma Anand Sheela, the hypnotic Acharya Rajneesh’s right-hand woman and most trusted disciple, will now be seen in a movie version of her life, to be played by none other than India’s most luscious Bollywood import Priyanka Chopra.
Speaking on Tuesday night on the widely watched The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Priyanka said that she is ‘developing’ a project on the life of Ma Anand Sheela (Sheela Ambalal Patel) with the highly-regarded director Barry Levinson who is best known for the Oscar-winning film Rain Man.
While this is a great news for Priyanka’s fans as she hasn’t been seen on screen in anything significant recently (and even her Hollywood film Isn’t It Romantic, releasing on February 14, has her in a relatively minor role), there are many hurdles to making a film on a figure as hideously controversial as Ma Sheela.
As personal secretary of Rajneesh (lately Osho), Ma Sheela created havoc with the law and was accused and sentenced for several crimes.
It is doubtful that the real Ma Sheela would allow Priyanka Chopra to do a screen version without exercising some level of creative control over what goes in the biopic. Also, since Priyanka said that the project is in development, it means it would take at least two years for the film to actually hit theatres. Does that mean we won’t see Priyanka on screen for that long?
Interestingly, Karan Johar is also developing a project based on the life of Acharya Rajneesh where Aamir Khan and Alia Bhatt are the potential actors to play Rajneesh and Ma Sheela.
