Joe Wright, the acclaimed director of Atonement and Pride & Prejudice, has signed on to direct an adaptation of Alex von Tunzelmann’s book, Indian Summer, for Working Title and Universal Pictures. The movie will represent a return to period drama and a British flavour for Wright, whose next movie, the upcoming The Soloist, was shot in LA and takes place in the present day. Back to basics, then? Hardly – Indian Summer should be a challenging and complex project for Wright, given that it’s about the end of the British colonial rule in India after the Second World War. That’s a pretty big subject, with all sorts of bases to cover and ramifications to explore. The movie will focus on Lord Mountbatten, and his wife Edwina, as they oversee the handover of power to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, amid scenes of extreme violence and civil unrest that cost roughly a million lives. However, the book also finds room for several significant players, including Gandhi. It’s going to be very interesting to see how Wright keeps the plates spinning in what looks like easily his most ambitious and biggest movie to date. William Nicholson, who wrote Gladiator, will pen the script, while Working Title’s Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Hilary Bevan Jones will produce. Filming is set to start next year, on location in India.
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