Oscars help get feet into doors and in some cases, probably make future collaborations possible. Despite pointing out the not so sunny side of things in India with Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle is being welcomed back with open arms and embraced by deep pockets looking to invest in his next co-production. If Boyle ever had difficulty finding financial support, I imagine that it is now a thing of the past, especially if he takes on another picture set in India — and low and behold, the filmmaker might be setting himself up with another project from the same backdrop. Screen Daily reports that Boyle has picked up the rights to author Suketu Mehta’s novel Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found but details are thin on whether this will actually be his next project.
Potentially a great read, The NYTimes book review claimed that “Maximum City is narrative reporting at its finest, probably the best work of nonfiction to come out of India in recent years … The depth of Mehta’s evocative and beautiful prose keeps things lively. Indeed, Mehta’s most impressive skill lies not in his documentary prowess but in the psychological acuity of his writing: we come away from his encounters feeling we know the inner lives of the people he has depicted. In this sense, Maximum City is more than a consideration of the material limits on urban living; it is a profound meditation on the existential (and even spiritual) longings that persist despite those limits.”
SD says Mehta’s book is part travelog, part cultural history and tells the stories of slum-dwellers, dancing girls, hit men and poets, all of whom have come to the city to make it. Indeed, their are perhaps to many off-putting similarities between this project and Slumdog, so expect Boyle to probably take on another project before making a xerox copy.
