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What Happened to Indian Summer with Cate Blanchett?

Rick Forchuk digs into the status of this forbidden love story

By Rick Forchuk /

Credit: Thore Siebrands

Cate Blanchett was in talks to star in Indian Summer before production stalled

“I want to see the movie Indian Summer with Cate Blanchett.  Can I get the DVD somewhere?  I lost track of the film and must have missed it in theatres.” – I. M., via e-mail

There is good news and bad news here. Indian Summer was scheduled for production in India in 2010, for release in 2011 and was to be a stunning story of forbidden love between Lady Edwina Mountbatten (Cate Blanchett) and Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. 

Location shooting on the Indian sub-continent was a must, for authenticity. That’s the good news. And it’s there that the trouble reportedly began. 

Because the story of this affair may have cast Nehru and his family in an inappropriate light, the Indian Government demanded script approval. While all that wrangling was going on, Universal, the studio fronting the project, faced some significant reported challenges with the budget, which was said to have ballooned from $20 million to more than $40 million. 

With all of that in play, the bad news is that the project has been shelved. There is no Indian Summer movie, you didn’t miss it in theatres, and there’s no report of it being resurrected.  Irrfan Khan of Slumdog Millionaire was supposed to play Nehru, but at this point, it looks as if this one is on hold indefinitely.