To the list of half-a-dozen Hollywood films to be shot in India in 2007, which includes Johnny Depp's Shantaram, now add one more: The Darjeeling Limited.
Wes Anderson, one of the most unconventional of Hollywood directors, will be shooting the film entirely in India. An eight week schedule, starting in December, means the film will be ready for a fall 2007 release. Anderson's earlier India connection is that he learnt yoga and meditation from actor Kumar Pallana in Austin, Texas, over 15 years ago.
According to trade magazine Variety, the film focuses on three brothers who take a spiritual trek through India, following the death of their father. It stars Owen Wilson (who co-wrote the script with Anderson and Roman Coppola), Jason Schwartzman and Oscar-winner Adrien Brody. It may be made in about $40 million, half the budget of an average Hollywood film.
Wilson, known for comedies such as last year's $330-million grosser Wedding Crashers (with Vince Vaughn) told reporters in Hollywood that The Darjeeling Limited is not a buddy road comedy. It will have the same gentle, oblique humour as other Anderson films, including the 1998 cult classic Rushmore, but it certainly won't be on the uproarious lines of Wedding Crashers. Pallana, who turned down an offer to be in Anderson's previous film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and instead chose Steven Spielberg's The Terminal, is looking forward to working with Anderson again.
"He makes films for Hollywood studios but he is a very different kind of a director," says Pallana, who used to run a holistic restaurant and yoga retreat in Austin about 10 years ago. There was also a chess parlour in the restaurant. Anderson was very fond of masala chai, yoga, chess and Indian classical music.
Pallana adds: "He is very spiritual and he loves to make films about relationships."And that was one of the qualities in Anderson that impressed Martin Scorsese a lot. Writing in Esquire six years ago, Scorsese noted: "Wes Anderson, at age 30, has a very special kind of talent. He knows how to convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness. This kind of sensibility is rare in movies."
Variety also reported that Anderson, whose moderate hits include The Royal Tenenbaums (in which Pallana had an intriguing role by the name Pagoda), will make the film for Fox Searchlight. Searchlight was the American distributor for Deepa Mehta's Water, which is ending its run with a strong $3.2 million. In September, Searchlight will release Mira Nair's The Namesake.
