Participant Media Joins Searchlight for Room at ‘Marigold’

Along with their social and politically-mind documentary film projects such as Waiting for Superman, the pairing of Participant Media with Fox Searchlight on The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel demonstrates that the business model has slightly changed for Participant to include the more profitable feature narrative items. Fox Searchlight had announced their intentions to join the book to film adaptation of Moggach’s novel “These Foolish Things” fairly early on – and perhaps part of the reason why this U.K production is adding another production co. might have to do with who is the person sitting in the director’s chair: John Madden. Madden’s track record hasn’t been great as of late – he is coming off the almost direct to DVD release of Killshot, and judging by the critical reaction at TIFF, the hit-man film The Debt with Helen Mirren looks as if it’ll lose out in its year-end release date.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel stars Tom Wilkinson, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy and Dev Patel – who’ll definitely bring on his Slumdog Millionaire charm to the production which begin this weekend in India. Searchlight will co-finance with Participant and Imagenation Abu Dhabi. Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin of Blueprint Pictures are producing.

Here’s the book synopsis:

Dr Ravi Kapoor has reached the end of his tether. He is over-worked and exhausted; his South London hospital is out of funds; and reporters are hounding him about a pensioner, who for three days lay on a trolley in A and E, untended, the blood stiffening on her clothes. Even home life has become impossible, as his father-in-law, a disgusting and difficult old man, has been kicked out of his nursing home and has moved into Ravi’s spare bedroom. But then that ‘tip top man’, his cousin, Sonny, has his brainwave, his ‘great eureka’. These Foolish Things is about Dunroamin, a converted guesthouse in Bangalore, where Sonny opens a home for old people. Travel and set-up are inexpensive, staff willing and plentiful – and the British pensionsers can enjoy the hot weather and take mango juice with their gin. Skilfully inter-weaving the stories of the inhabitants of Dunroamin, their characters and their families, Deborah Moggach has created a world in which hilarity is matched with the poignancy of getting old, and comedy with the darker issues of care in the community.