The brooding Johnny Depp is all set to star in and produce Shantaram, based on an Australian novel set in Mumbai. Warner Bros bagged the contract and Depp was apparently the second choice to play the lead, following Hollywood?s reigning Australian hunk, the Oscar-winning Russell Crowe.

The 2003 novel, which is awaiting US release, is based on author Gregory David Roberts?s life. Depp will play the narrator of the story, a drug addict who escapes from Australian prison and flees to Mumbai.

Though no details are available about shooting schedules, we can hope that Depp and the crew ? also to include Helena Bonham Carter (picture below) and Emily Watson ? will make the trip to India for authentic on-location footage.

The story is being adapted for the screen by Roberts himself, who was, till recently, considered one of Australia?s most-wanted escaped convicts. He had committed a series of robberies while addicted to heroin in 1978, for which he was sentenced to 19 years in prison, but he ?escaped over the front wall of Victoria?s maximum-security prison, in broad daylight?, in July 1980.

Ten years later, he was captured in Germany and extradited to Australia, where he completed his prison sentence. He is now a full-time writer and lives in Melbourne. Having made an honest man of himself, Roberts has also become rich, reportedly being paid $2 million for the rights to his tale, which has been called a masterpiece by some critics.

The protagonist is Greg, also a heroin-addict, who changed his name to Lindsay on reaching India. ?I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed and starved. I went to war. I ran into enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died,? he says. However, the tale looks beyond the action: ?So it begins, this story, like everything else ? with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck.?

The intensely attractive Depp, who stars as J.M. Barrie in Finding Neverland, is also slated to play another favourite from literature ? Willie Wonka in Roald Dahl?s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The man, who sometimes goes by the pseudonyms of Oprah Noodlemantra and Mr Stench, amongst a few unmentionable others, is also returning as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean 2.