Franzoni and Brown were in Istanbul last week to meet with Rumi experts and visited the mystic’s mausoleum in Konya.
A key challenge will be trying to build credible and identifiable profiles of Rumi and Shams from a considerable body of mythology.
I think it’s a world that needs to be spoken to; Rumi is hugely popular in the United States.
David Franzoni, who wrote the script for the 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, and Stephen Joel Brown, a producer on the Rumi film, said they wanted to challenge the stereotypical portrayal of Muslim characters in western cinema by charting the life of the great Sufi scholar.