The Disney franchise is about to go the desi route with ‘Bride and Prejudice’ director Gurinder Chadha and screenwriter Paul Mayeda Berges set to helm an original musical feature, which will reportedly be about a ‘dynamic princess’ from Indian history.
Chadha is a two-time BAFTA nominee for her work on ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ and for her debut film ‘Bhaji on the Beach’. Her film, ‘What’s Cooking’ served as the Opening Night film for the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. and was also the first British script to be taken into the Sundance Institute’s Writer’s Lab.
Deadline reports that the project would be headed by the President of the Walt Disney Motion Picture Production, Sean Bailey. Producer Lindy Goldstein, who made ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’ is also set to join the production team.
In addition to a BAFTA nomination for Best British Film, Chadha’s ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ had received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and a Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Her production company Bend It Films has grossed in excess of $300 million USD at the box office. In 2015, both Chadha and Berges debuted the stage musical version of ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ in London’s West End.
Her most recent film, ‘Blinded By The Light’, that revolved around Javed, a 16 year old Pakistani boy growing up in Margaret Thatcher’s England in 1987, was acquired at a whopping deal of $15 million at the Sundance Film Festival.
