Hollywood to make film on Azerbaijani oil history featuring superstars
By Nigar Orujova
A feature film about the history of Baku oil industry starring world-known actors will be shot in Hollywood.
The multi-million dollar film to be produced by the chairman of the Baku Nobel Heritage Fund Togrul Bagirov in the frame of the Nobel project will show the history of Baku oil through the eyes of the Nobel brothers.
The film will describe mutual relations in the Nobels-Rothschilds-Rockefellers triangle of the great powers and the global role played by the Baku oil. All this will be shown in the context of the Nobel oil empire's prosperity and fall, the communist revolution in Russia and political compromises of the early 1920s.
The film presumably will be called 'The Big Game' or 'The Oil Wars' and will underline that the Baku oil has always been in the focus of international attention, being "an award" which superpowers were endeavoring to gain.
The film will feature historical analysis of the global fight for oil, written by Bagirov himself, and is expected to get a lot of public attention, as the oil theme remains significant around the world to this day.
The script is ready and talks are currently underway with the leading film studios of the United States. The Nobel Brothers Pictures producing company has already been established in the U.S., which owns all the rights for the movie's script.
Bagirov said that this will be the first film about Azerbaijan shot in Hollywood.
The large-scale movie, which will be filming in Baku and the U.S., will be made with the use of innovative technologies.
It is expected that the film will star Anthony Hopkins, Michael Douglas, Monica Bellucci, Antonio Banderas and Dolph Lundgren, Bagirov said.
The film about one of the prominent epochs in Azerbaijani history will also have a love story about a daughter of Azerbaijani millionaire Zeynalabdin Tagiyev, Leyla, and Emanuel Nobel.
"They have a large disparity in age; however, it does not stand in the way of the feelings. Emanuel supported Leyla till the end of his life and experienced sincere love for her," Bagirov said.
The first oil boom, which occurred in Baku in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is strongly associated with the Nobel family in Azerbaijan. The Nobels led the charge to develop Azerbaijan's oil resources at the end of the 19th century.
The family introduced innovations like oil pipelines and steam-powered tankers to the oil industry, transforming Baku into one of the world's leading oil sources for a glorious and brief period.
They established the Nobel Brothers Oil Extracting Partnership, which became the most authoritative oil concern in Russia and worldwide in 1879.
By the early 20th century, the Nobel Brothers had become the dominant company in Azerbaijan. In 1917, the company consisted of more than 20 subsidiary firms with a total capital investment of more than 130 million rubles.
When the Bolsheviks came to power, the Nobels' industrial empire fell apart and all the oil fields were expropriated.
Emanuel Nobel was the last of the Nobels who left Baku in 1919. He and the oil company's chief manager were saved from the Red Army soldiers by their workers.