Gurinder Chadha has revealed that she’s making a film based on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” but one with a distinctly contemporary twist.
Speaking to U.K. Parliament on Tuesday about the current state of the U.K. film industry, she said the upcoming film was would have an Indian lead character, which would be “a Scrooge who was a Tory who hated refugees.”
Chadha, best known for Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley starrer “Bend it Like Beckham,” also said the film had support from True Brit Entertainment, the new distribution company set up by former Lionsgate U.K. and Europe head and Marv Studios CEO Zygi Kamasa.
“It’s very close to Dickens’ original themes with the cost of living crisis in the Britain,” she said, admitting that she’d spoken to U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about the film and he’d asked her not “make him look bad” (to which she responded “I don’t have to do that for you.”)
But in making her Scrooge Indian, she said the film had proved a struggle to put together, with Chadha — despite being a hugely respected beloved director — being told that her that “it was not commercial and was small — it changes everything in terms of how you get it financed.”
“Right now I’m putting together an independent Christmas film set in London, very diverse and it’s been a real struggle for me to get that film off the ground,” Chadha said. “Partly because the lead character is Indian. And I’ve always had that with the films I’ve made.”
More to come…
