Fresh off his breakout performance in Ang Lee's "Life of Pi," Suraj Sharma is setting sail for Disney's baseball movie "Million Dollar Arm."
Craig Gillespie ("Lars and the Real Girl") is directing the sports drama, which is a co-production between Mayhem Pictures and Roth Films.
Jon Hamm stars as J.B. Bernstein, a real-life sports agent who discovered professional pitchers Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh through a reality show he staged in India with 40,000 auditioning cricket players, who use a similar motion as baseball pitchers.
Sharma will play one of the two pitchers, though it wasn't clear at press time which one.
Tom McCarthy ("The Visitor") wrote the movie, which will also feature Alan Arkin as a retired baseball scout.
Mayhem's Mark Ciardi and Gordon Gray are producing with Joe Roth of Roth Films, whose Palak Patel is among the executive producers.
Production is scheduled to start next month in Mumbai before segueing to Atlanta.
Hailing from New Delhi, India, Sharma won the lead role in "Life of Pi" after beating out thousands of other actors for the coveted part in the big-budget 20th Century Fox drama, which grossed more than $600 million worldwide and won four Oscars including best director for Ang Lee.
Sharma's well-reviewed turn in the film has drawn the attention of casting directors eager to cast fresh faces, and he was recently nominated for Best Breakthrough Performance at the MTV Movie Awards.
Sharma is repped by CAA.
