Shoania, the movie!

Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza may have thought the speculation about their lives would end once they finally tied the knot, but the two are mistaken.

The near-month long saga featuring the bizarre love triangle of a girl called Ayesha Siddiqui, Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik and Indian tennis player Sania Mirza is now being turned into a film titled Hyderabadi Damaad.

But Sania Mirza is, predictably enough, rather mad at this latest intrusion into the newly-married couple’s life.

Mirza was quoted by India’s The Telegraph newspaper as saying, “It’s rather strange that I have not even been approached by the filmmakers. Nor have they sought my permission. How can they (do this)?”

“It’s a shame if the director is relying on distorted information he has picked up through inaccurate media coverage and Bollywood gossip.”

Hyderabadi Damaad will star the actor Debina Bonnerjee, who has earlier played the role of Sita for a dramatization of the Ramayan. Debina told the Mail Today that the film would be ‘inspired’ by Sania Mirza. “The film is not a biographical piece of work on Sania. Hyderabadi Damaad will be adequately fictionalised.”

According to The Telegraph, “Sania’s father Imran Mirza and mother Naseema flew to Mumbai soon after the news of the film broke. A source close to the family said the Mirzas have approached their friends in Bollywood to try and persuade the producer to drop the movie, or at least make it less spicy.”

Indians and Pakistanis were hooked onto to their television sets for days while the Shoania mania was at its peak, with television channels providing tours of the bedroom the couple would stay in Pakistan and hundreds of Pakistanis turned out to see the couple when they landed at the Karachi airport.

The entire saga began with Shoaib Malik announcing his marriage to Sania Mirza, which was then followed up by a girl called Ayesha Siddiqui who claimed she had already been married to Malik. Malik said the ‘marriage’ had been organized under false pretences, as he had never met Siddiqui and had only struck up a friendship with her over the internet. The couple married over the phone and Siddiqui sent Malik another girl’s picture as her own. While Ayesha Siddiqui’s parents planned to take Malik to court, he managed to settle the case before it reached the courtroom and was able to marry Sania Mirza.

Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik, who plan to live in Dubai, are not the only couple whose lives have attracted attention from filmmakers. The 1981 film Silsila, starring Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Rekha and Sanjeev Kumar, is said to be based on the reported relationship of Amitabh and Rekha, while the 1998 film Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai was often compared to Imran and Jemima Khan’s relationship. Several made-for-television films have documented the love lives of British Royals including Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Prince Andrew.