Shekhar Kapur to Direct 'London Fields'

GOA – Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) will direct murder mystery London Fields, based on the well-known 1989 novel by British author Martin Amis.

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“I am looking forward to this project because I have never directed a murder mystery before,” Kapur told The Hollywood Reporter on the sidelines of the annual Film Bazaar market organized by the Indian government's National Film Development Corporation which concluded Sunday in Goa.

Film rights for London Fields were jointly acquired in 2000 by Tartan Films and US production outfit Muse Productions headed by Chris Hanley ( credits include Buffalo 66, The Virgin Suicides, American Psycho and The Killer Inside Me.) Hanley will serve as the film's producer alongwith Jordan Gertner (of Muse's associate financing company Hero) and Mary Vernieu.

London Fields is narrated by an American writer, Samson Young, living in London who has had writer's block for 20 years and is now terminally ill while other main characters include a psychic woman, Nicola Six, who meets two men in a bar and  senses that one of them will murder her on her 35th birthday.

London Fields has had Michael Winterbottom and David Cronenberg attached as directors in the past.

Kapur started out directing Bollywood musicals in the Eighties before moving on to 1994's gritty bio-pic Bandit Queen followed by his 1998 mainstream breakthrough with the Cate Blanchett-starrer Elizabeth and its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

While Kapur did not give a specific time frame as to when London Fields could go into production, the director is also busy prepping other projects, most notably his passion project Paani (Water) which is set in a futuristic Mumbai where water divides the haves and the have-nots. “I am also in preparations for the third instalment of Elizabeth,” he added.

Kapur is repped by CAA and managed by Sentient Entertainment.