LONDON, Oct. 14: Oscar-winning French director Jean-Jacques Annaud is understood to be planning a terrorism thriller on Kashmir.

According to a report in the Guardian three ex-mercenaries head for the region after hearing that a terrorist leader with a $30m price on his head is going to be in town for a while. But it turns out that each of them has another reason for being in the area, and tensions mount as they near their objective.

Quoting a Variety report, the newspaper said that Annaud is in final negotiations to direct and, as is his wont, has made up his mind to shoot as close to the area he is depicting on film as possible. However, given the politically tense nature of Kashmir, location scouts are also looking at sites in Argentina, Mexico and other parts of India.

Annaud’s first feature film, Black and White in Colour, was awarded the best foreign language Oscar in 1976, but he is perhaps best known for 1997’s critical flop Seven Years in Tibet which managed to cause a certain amount of controversy. Two years after the film’s release, Annaud confirmed that while most of the film was shot in Argentina, two crews had secretly shot footage in Tibet. The Chinese authorities banned Annaud and stars Brad Pitt and David Thewlis from ever entering the country due to positive depictions of the Dalai Lama in the film.

Pitt’s portrayal of Austrian mountaineer and one-time SS Nazi Heinrich Harrer was also the subject of a certain amount of attention: he came third in a BBC poll of the all-time worst movie accents.

The next project set in the disputed region on the border of India and Pakistan, it is speculated, would not make Jean-Jacques Annaud popular in certain parts of the subcontinent.