Hollywood plans movie on Mother Teresa

The shooting of the movie may start by the end of 2014 with an eye toward a release in spring or summer 2015, the report said.

United States:  Two big names in the Hollywood are joining to bring the story of Mother Teresa to the big screen with a biopic titled I Thirst, according to a media report.

Tony Krantz, the former head of Imagine Entertainment's television division and executive producer on shows such as 24, has teamed up with Origin Entertainment and the Mother Teresa Center for the project, according to a report in Hollywood Reporter.

Keir Pearson, the Oscar-nominated scribe who co-wrote Hotel Rwanda, has been tapped to pen the script, telling the story of the Albanian-born Catholic nun whose work with the poor in India made her a worldwide icon.

Also involved are the legal trustees of Teresa's estate, giving this biopic an official stamp of approval as well as access to rarely seen archives.

The producers say Pearson will conduct research in Kolkata, India, and Tijuana, Mexico, and begin writing by the end of February.

The shooting of the movie may start by the end of 2014 with an eye toward a release in spring or summer 2015, the report said.

The producer believed that any project should be done in "lockstep with the Missionaries of Charity. They should not just be a part of it but also be one of the authors."

The parties made a deal so the Mother Teresa estate has creative and business approval, even veto power. Krantz does not believe this will dilute or whitewash the telling of Teresa's story.

The narrative, he says, is not a cradle to grave biopic but one that will focus on Teresa's arrival in Calcutta in the 1950s, her starting out on her lifelong journey, and the existential and spiritual doubt that would plague her for years.

"That aspect is fundamental to our story," says Krantz. "The Missionaries of Charity and the people who are in charge of her legacy have been interested in telling her real story and putting her out there as a real human being -- a real woman who had a sense of humor, who was tough, was smart, and who was up against major odds."

Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, helping lepers, orphans and the sick in the early 1950s. In 1965 she opened its first international branch in Venezuela, and her organization spread to dozens of countries by the end of the 1970s.

She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and brokered a temporary cease fire in Beirut so she could evacuate 37 children from a frontline hospital but engendered criticism from certain quarters for the poor health conditions in the hospices and hospitals she set up.

Source: hollywoodreporter.com