The AARP-eligible thespian is set to coproduce and star in Racing the Monsoon, a comedy-adventure about a jewel-craving adventurer set in an far-flung locale.
Sound familiar? The plot, of course, recalls Douglas' glory days playing Jack T. Colton ("T stands for Trustworthy"), exotic bird collector turned adventurer who teams up with mousy romance novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) to hunt for buried treasure in 1984's Romancing the Stone and its 1986 sequel, Jewel of the Nile.
However contrary to previous reports, Monsoon is not the long-rumored follow-up to those earlier films.
Instead, says Douglas' rep Alan Burry, the new picture will retain the "spirit" of those earlier swashbucklers. That means Douglas will be playing a new character and won't be reunited with old pals Turner or Danny DeVito. "It's a project we've had in development for some time and it is centered in India," says Burry.
"It's an action-romantic adventure kind of thing like Romancing was...in the same genre, but it's just not those characters and that set up continuing."
Douglas, who will coproduce Monsoon through his Furthur Films banner with Indian-based Percept Picture Company and Sarah One Motion Pictures, traveled to Bombay, where he and his fellow producers announced the film at a press conference.
"It will be a thriller about a diamond robbery," Shailendra Singh, Percept's managing director, told reporters. "There will be a lot of India in the film--an Indian diamond mine, an Indian train. The train will be a crucial part of the film. The chase and most of the stunts will be on the train."
According to Burry, the press mix-up over whether Monsoon was a Romancing the Stone sequel came after Douglas compared the new film's breezy tone and action-adventure trappings to the earlier '80s blockbusters that mined the popularity of the Indiana Jones films and helped land Douglas on on Tinseltown's A-list, preceding hits like Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct and Wall Street, which earned him a Best Actor Oscar.
The Monsoon script is being penned by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, the writers behind Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (Douglas, 61, will get a jump on the fourth installment of the Indy Jones series. That project remains stalled while 62-year-old star Harrison Ford and producers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg try to settle on a workable script and shooting window that fits all three's schedules.)
Douglas first broached the idea to Singh when the two met in Monte Carlo a year and a half ago. The two kept up the discussions at a later meeting in London.
Burry says the actor became inspired after reading a Wall Street Journal article profiling traditional Indian couriers called Angadias, who have the dangerous job of moving money and uncut diamonds around various Indian cities by train.
Fans of Douglas' wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, will be dismayed to learn that Racing the Monsoon will likely pair Douglas with former Miss World Aishwarya Rai, one of Bollywood's highest paid stars.
"Michael will be acting in the movie and there will be one more Hollywood star," Singh said at the press conference. "The rest of the cast and crew will be Indian...Aishwarya Rai is our preffered choice."
The Indian actress is setting her sights on Hollywood after having recently starred in the U.K. flick Bride and Prejudice from the makers of Bend It Like Bendham. Bride is due in the U.S. next month. Rai is also attached to two high-profile English-language films now in development: Singularity, opposite Brendan Fraser, and Chaos, costarring Meryl Streep.
Cameras are slated roll on Racing the Monsoon by the end of the year or the beginning of 2006. First, Douglas will shoot 20th Century Fox's The Sentinel, a political thriller with Kim Basinger and Kiefer Sutherland.
