According to trade magazine Variety, the film focuses on three brothers who take a spiritual trek through India, following the death of their father. It stars Owen Wilson (who co-wrote the script with Anderson and Roman Coppola), Jason Schwartzman and Oscar-winner Adrien Brody. It may be made in about $40 million, half the budget of an average Hollywood film.
Wilson, known for comedies such as last year's $330-million grosser
Wedding Crashers (with Vince Vaughn) told reporters in Hollywood that
The Darjeeling Limited is not a buddy road comedy. It will have the same gentle, oblique humour as other Anderson films, including the 1998 cult classic
Rushmore, but it certainly won't be on the uproarious lines of
Wedding Crashers.
Pallana, who turned down an offer to be in Anderson's previous film
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and instead chose Steven Spielberg's
The Terminal, is looking forward to
working with Anderson again.
"He makes films for Hollywood studios but he is a very different kind of a director," says Pallana, who used to run a holistic restaurant and yoga retreat in Austin about 10 years ago. There was also a chess parlour in the restaurant. Anderson was very fond of masala chai, yoga, chess and Indian classical music.
Pallana adds: "He is very spiritual and he loves to make films about relationships."
And that was one of the qualities in Anderson that impressed Martin Scorsese a lot. Writing in Esquire six years ago, Scorsese noted: "Wes Anderson, at age 30, has a very special kind of talent. He knows how to convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness. This kind of sensibility is rare in movies."
Variety also reported that Anderson, whose moderate hits include The Royal Tenenbaums (in which Pallana had an intriguing role by the name Pagoda), will make the film for Fox Searchlight. Searchlight was the American distributor for Deepa Mehta's Water, which is ending its run with a strong $3.2 million. In September, Searchlight will release Mira Nair's The Namesake.