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PRODUCTION UK

Wright set to enjoy Indian Summer

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Post the stupendous success of Slumdog Millionaire [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danny Boyle
film profile
]
, India seems to be the new favoured destination for British films. Atonement [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and Pride and Prejudice [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
director Joe Wright will return to costume drama and will revisit the erstwhile British empire’s former “Jewel in the Crown” with Indian Summer.

William Nicholson (Gladiator, Elizabeth: The Golden Age [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
) is writing the script, based on Alex von Tunzelmann’s bestselling book Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. The film will look at the tumultuous events that led to the partition of the subcontinent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947 that signalled the end of the British Empire, and caused the deaths of over a million people in the ensuing communal violence.

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The chief dramatis personae in these events were India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Pakistan’s first leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the last Viceroy of India Lord Mountbatten, his glamorous wife Edwina and the charismatic Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the architect of subcontinent’s freedom. The book is provocative and potentially controversial, with Gandhi being described as maddeningly indecisive.

The film is a co-production between Universal and Working Title. Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce along with Hilary Bevan Jones. Indian Summer is Wright’s fourth collaboration association with Working Title and the first of a two-film deal that he signed with Working Title and Universal in 2008. Wright’s current film, the Universal-Dreamworks co-production The Soloist, is due an American release on April 24.

Indian Summer will begin shooting on location in India in early 2010. No cast has been announced yet.

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