British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom has announced his first feature in three years, and it’ll star the Bafta award-winning star Dev Patel.
Variety reports that The Wedding Guest will be Dev’s next film, after Hotel Mumbai is released in 2018, telling the story of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.
Both films are set in India, as was Lion, the 2016 film about a man who sets out to find his long-lost family that netted the former Skins star his first Oscar nomination and his first Bafta.
Apart from that, there’s not much we know about The Wedding Guest, other than the fact it will see him paired with another great director. He’s already worked with some of the best, including Danny Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire, Aaron Sorkin on The Newsroom, and John Madden on The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. But this will be his first collaboration with Michael Winterbottom, whose most well-known work includes Welcome to Sarajevo and 24 Hour Party People.
Recently though he’s been directing comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip, a semi-improvised show that sees the two stars play fictionalized versions of themselves as they go on a restaurant tour of places such as Yorkshire in England, Italy and Spain and compete with each over who can do the best impression of Michael Caine.
Winterbottom’s quirky films are always unusual and worth a watch, such as 2006’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story or Trishna, his 2011 retelling of Tess of the d’Urbervilles set in India and starring Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed.
It’ll be a treat to see him direct our Dev.
Do you like the sound of this collaboration?