Indian filmmaker Shonali Bose may be making her TV directorial debut. The “Margarita with a Straw” co-writer and co-director has signed on to write and direct a potential pilot based on Diksha Basu’s upcoming debut novel, “The Windfall,” Deadline reports. Paramount TV and Anonymous Content teamed up to option the rights to the book.
According to the source, “The Windfall” centers on “an Indian couple in Delhi who are suddenly catapulted from their humble middle class origins into massive wealth. When they leave their safe and yet claustrophobic environs of their East Delhi home, and move to a mansion in the plush new suburb of Gurgaon, the family discovers what it means to be nouveau riche in modern India as they struggle to fit in.” The book will hit shelves this June. While Bose was born in Calcutta, she went to university in Delhi.
Rosalie Swedlin and Doreen Wilcox Little are executive producing for Anonymous Content.
Bose’s award-winning debut film, “Amu,” made its world premiere at the Berlinale in 2005. The drama follows an Indian-American woman who has lived in the U.S. since the age of three. She travels to India to visit her family after graduating from UCLA and discovers shocking family secrets. Bose’s follow-up, 2014’s “Margarita with a Straw,” made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Best Asian Film Award. The coming-of-age drama tells the story of a teen with cerebral palsy.
“I grew up with a relative, only one year younger than me, who has cerebral palsy. I asked her what she wanted for her 40th birthday, and she replied that she just wanted to have sex,” Bose told us in an interview. “That remark stayed with me. I also had an incredibly close relationship with my own mother, who I lost at the age of 21. At that time, I was in a relationship with a woman, but I didn’t have the courage to tell my mother until it was too late. Thus [‘Margarita with a Straw’] is drawn extensively from my personal experiences,” she explained.
When we asked Bose what she thinks the biggest misconception about her work is, she answered, “That my films are ‘small’ films or that they are not commercial. The only thing stopping my films from being box office successes is marketing and distribution,” she said. “Audiences have loved my films, whether in a film festival or in a regular theater in a small town in India.”
