Danny Boyle to make another Mumbai-based movie?

According to Livemint.com and SlashFilm, Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle has purchased the film rights to Suketu Mehta’s 2004 book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. Rumors have it that Indian actor Aamir Khan might star in the movie.

Mehta’s first book, a searing account of Mumbai—part personal essay, part travelogue—received global acclaim and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. The film rights were apparently sold earlier this month.

Boyle, who shot Slumdog on the streets and slums of Mumbai, one of the most crowded cities in the world, has, in the past, often credited Mehta’s book for its invaluable insights into the city.

Last December, in a Seattle Weekly interview about the making of Slumdog, Boyle said: “Maximum City, became my Bible, really. I took it with me everywhere. I felt part of the time we were adaptingthat.”

Mehta’s non-fiction narrative immersed itself in the lives of Mumbai’s policemen, underworld dons, dancing girls and religious mafia. With a journalist’s skill in documenting, he met with Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray, followed Mumbai top cops on their beats, and tracked the life of a bar dancer, weaving it all in a modern-day epic that compared the Indian megapolis with that other Godzilla-sized city, New York.