Reuters announces ”The Alchemist” film schedule

Reuters.com announces that Warner Bros. Pictures, which bought film rights of Paulo Coelho‘s “The Alchemist” in the early 1990s, plans to start filming in Jordan by the end of this year for scheduled release in 2004.
British actor Jeremy Irons and U.S. pop icon Madonna play leading roles in the film, which has an £80 million budget.
Madonna, which should play the role of Fatima, the gipsy who interprets dreams, called The Alchemist “a beautiful book about magic, dreams and the treasures we seek elsewhere and then find on our doorstep“. British actor Jeremy Irons will also be part of the cast.

Coelho became a worldwide famous author with his 1993 symbolic masterpiece, The Alchemist, the story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy that with the help of several enchanted strangers, learns to listen to himself. From his home in Spain, he journeys to Tangiers, and from there into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him.