Acclaimed director Paul Schrader recently shared insights about his abandoned film project ‘Xtreme City’, which would have marked Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s debut in Hollywood alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. The project was conceived during the 2011 Berlin Film Festival, with Martin Scorsese attached as an executive producer. However, it ultimately fell through due to Khan’s waning interest and reluctance to play a secondary role to DiCaprio, as Schrader noted in a podcast interview.
During a recent podcast appearance, the acclaimed director discussed the shelved film project ‘Xtreme City’, which was intended to feature Shah Rukh alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, with Martin Scorsese as the producer. Initially, there was significant enthusiasm for the project, and the trio even met in Berlin to discuss its potential. However, Schrader noted that Khan’s commitment began to wane over time, leading to the project’s eventual demise.
Schrader revealed that had Khan participated in the film ‘Xtreme City’, he would have had to play “second banana” to Leonardo DiCaprio, a role Khan has never taken on in his career. Schrader explained, “Shah Rukh is the boss. He hires directors. Sometimes he hires multiple directors: he’ll hire someone for the musical number; he’ll hire somebody else for the action; he’ll hire somebody else for the personal-relationship scenes. He can do that.” He noted that Khan had never really worked under the direction of an auteur, which was beginning to “grate on him.” Additionally, Khan had never acted in a Western film or taken a subordinate role to someone like DiCaprio before. This insight was shared during Schrader’s appearance on the Pod Casty for Me podcast, where he discussed the complexities that ultimately led to the project’s cancellation.
Paul also shared that the plot of the abandoned film ‘Xtreme City’ would have featured Shah Rukh as a gangster who is confronted by an American police officer, played by Leonardo, after the cop saves his life in India. Despite efforts to keep the project going, Khan eventually lost interest, which led to DiCaprio losing interest as well.
He shared, “Bit-by-bit, I wrote the script. I went to Mumbai several times to see him and be with him — I could feel the ground slowly eroding underneath him. So finally his commitment was provisional, and then once his commitment went from ‘firm’ to ‘provisional,’ Leo’s went from ‘firm’ to ‘provisional.’ Now you have two ‘provisional’ commitments, which means you have no commitment at all.”