Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville and The X Files’ Gillian Anderson are to star in Gurinder Chadha’s upcoming partition drama Viceroy’s House, which is set to shoot in India later this year.
The
feature drama will chart the life inside Viceroy’s House, the sumptuous
Delhi home of the British rulers of India, and the momentous political
decisions that led to the Partition of India in 1947.
For six
months in 1947, iconic British statesmen Lord Mountbatten assumed the
post of last Viceroy, charged with handing India back to its people.
Mountbatten
lived upstairs together with his wife and daughter, downstairs lived
their 5,000 Hindu, Muslim and Sikh servants. As the political elite took
their seats upstairs to wrangle over the birth of independent India,
conflict erupted throughout the House.
Chadha, Deepak Nayar and Paul Ritchie produce the feature backed by Pathé and sold by Pathé International.
Viceroy’s House was co-developed and co-financed by BBC Films. Executive producer is Christine Langan.