Cate Blanchett's Indian Summer Gets Shelved

Cate Blanchett’s latest film project, Indian Summer, has been fighting an uphill battle. Now it appears that the movie has been shelved for the forseeable future by the struggling Universal.

Indian Summer, directed by Joe Wright, tells the story of Lady Edwina Mountbatten (Blanchett) and her affair with the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (here, rumored to have been played by Irrfan Khan, of Slumdog Millionaire and The Namesake). Concerned that the story of this love affair might paint Nehru in an unfavorable light, the Indian government insisted on interceding to review the script before it would allow the film to begin shooting in India.

However, after getting the go-ahead from government officials, now it seems that Indian Summer is being delayed again because of further creative and budget concerns. Production company Universal has had well-documented financial problems this year, and Indian Summer’s estimated $30-40 million budget, including the costs of shooting on location in India, reportedly led them to influence Wright to make a more marketable, less serious, picture.

Wright told Variety: “We were in between a rock and a hard place. The Indian government wanted us to make less of the love story while the studio wanted us to make more of the love story.”

Wright considered limiting his budget to $30 million, so that subsidiary production company Working Title could have full greenlight power over his film, without requiring Universal’s creative input. But now, it appears, Wright will hold off on production altogether to wait for more favorable market conditions.

The film, which was in pre-production at the time of this announcement, had been slated for release in 2011.

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