Will Vishal Bharadwaj make Johnny Depp do another ‘Beedi jalaye le’? The buzz going around is that the director-composer has got the music assignment of Mira Nair’s Shantaram. The composer has been asked by Mira to compose four Sufi numbers, and a masala Bollywood item number for the film.

“It is learnt that the item number will be picturised on Depp,” a source said.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that Nitin Desai’s Studio is getting ready for Depp’s shooting in Mumbai. The art director’s team is busy recreating Dharavi, the place where Shantaram lived most of the time when he was in Mumbai.

“Most of the shooting is likely to take place in the studio and very little of it may happen at actual locations. Depp, it is learnt, may arrive in India after Christmas for the shooting of the film. Mira Nair has asked Amitabh Bachchan who plays a pivotal role in the film to block his dates for the film at that time,” adds the source. Bachchan will be playing a kind-hearted gangster in the film.

When contacted Amitabh Bachchan said, “Yes, they have asked me to block my dates from January 2008 to May 2008.”

There were reports about Gregory David Robert aka Shantaram wanting Shah Rukh Khan to play the character of Qasim Ali Hussein, but it is still not clear if Khan will be doing the project. Also, Irrfan Khan too may be part of Shantaram although there is still uncertainty over which character he will be playing in the film.

Shantaram is an adaptation of Gregory David Roberts’s book of the same name. The film is about Robert, a convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict who escapes from Pentridge Prison, Australia, and flees to India to live in Mumbai.