Bollywood actor Vidya Balan will portray Indian-English writer Kamala Surayya in a bilingual biopic.

The Malayalam-English movie, revolving around the eventful personal and literary life of Surayya, will be directed by Kamal.

The writer, who wrote in English as Kamala Das and enriched Malayalam literature under the pseudonym Madhavikutty, had changed her name to Kamala Surayya after embracing Islam a few years before her death in 2009.

“Madhavikutty was a legendary writer and personality, who questioned the hypocrisies of the society through her works.

But, my movie will not be a completely realistic one. It will have real situations that happened in the life of the writer as well as fictional ones,” Kamal said.

“I first talked to Vidya about this project two years ago. It was just an informal chat but she was happy and excited to accept the role,” he said.

Besides Vidya, Malayalam actor Prithviraj will also play a pivotal role in the movie.

“Prithviraj’s character will be a fictional one. But, I cannot divulge more details about it right now. I am yet to discuss with him about the character as he is busy with other projects,” Kamal said.

“The script of the English version is complete while some more work is pending for the Malayalam one. I hope we can start the shooting of the movie by this October,” he said.