Gurinder Chadha is clearly not a director who shirks a challenge.
The British-Asian director has turned her hand in recent years from a football comedy (Bend It Like Beckham) to a lavish Bollywood-style musical (Bride & Prejudice). And now she’s heading fearlessly into the world of horror, with her new film, It’s A Wonderful Afterlife.
If you can’t guess from the pun-tastic title, though, this isn’t pitch-black horror, but rather a horror comedy, which Chadha herself has likened to My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Shaun Of The Dead.
The story revolves around a British-Asian mother who, in her desperation to marry off her daughter, turns to murder. Soon, the corpses start piling up – and, if the title is any indication, perhaps they even come back to life.
"It's a comic caper very much in the tradition of classic Ealing comedies," Chadha told Daily Variety.. "It's a return for me to the characters and setting of Bend It Like Beckham but in a different genre, namely horror, although I would say that the gore will be easy on the eye!”
Chadha is co-writing the movie with her husband, Paul Berges, with whom she wrote Bend It Like Beckham. Shooting is currently scheduled to start in February.