UK director Gurinder Chadha, whose credits include Bhaji On The Beach and the US-set What's Cooking', is to direct an English-language Bollywood-style film set in the UK.

Chadha is aiming for the all-singing, all-dancing film to cross UK and Indian cultural barriers, doing for the Bollywood musical what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did for wire-fu action flicks. The move comes as Bollywood films are riding high at the box-office internationally, accounting for eight out of the top ten foreign-language films at the UK box-office last year.

"I want to use Bollywood film language, but make a film that appeals dramatically to people who aren't necessarily aware of that Bollywood film language," Chadha said. "It will be aimed at an international audience - not necessarily an Indian Bollywood audience."

Chadha will write the script with husband and regular co-writer Paul Mayeda Berges. The film, likely to blend UK and Indian financing, is to feature Bollywood stars, as well as UK and possibly US actors.

Chadha, who this year wrapped the UK-set Bend It Like Beckham, has long aimed to bring a Bollywood-style film to the screen - after Bhaji On The Beach, her acclaimed debut feature about an Asian women's daytrip to UK seaside resort Blackpool, she directed Love In London, an ill-fated Bollywood film for an Indian producer. Also set in the UK, the film shut down four weeks into a 12-week shooting schedule when financing dried up.

"At the time it was a nightmare, because people didn't get paid and all the rest of it," said Chadha. "But it was an interesting exercise, because the Indian way of working is very different. I thought I was working with actors - I was working with stars. The money was never very stable - the way they work is that they do a one, two or three week schedule and then they stop and raise a bit more money."

Chadha is also attached to direct New Line's Neurotica, based on the novel by UK writer Sue Margolis and scripted by Sara Goodman, which Chadha describes as "very funny, very risque". The New York-set screenplay is currently being shopped for casting.

"It's all about a woman, who's a reporter, who has to do a story on a book called The Clitoris Centred Woman, which urges women to go out and behave like men," Chadha said.

Topics