Renowned filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (“Bandit Queen,” “Elizabeth”) is planning a sequel to his 1983 directorial debut “Masoom,” Variety can reveal.
The film is titled “Masoom… The New Generation.” Details of the plot, studio and cast are under wraps at the moment.
Written by Gulzar (Oscar winner for “Slumdog Millionaire”), “Masoom” was an adaptation of Erich Segal’s 1980 novel “Man, Woman and Child.” It followed a happily married couple and their two daughters whose lives are disrupted with the arrival of a boy who is the man’s son from an earlier affair. The cast included Naseeruddin Shah (“Taj: Divided by Blood”), Shabana Azmi (“Halo”), Jugal Hansraj (“NRI Wives”), Supriya Pathak (“Tabbar”), Saeed Jaffrey (“The Man Who Would Be King”) and Urmila Matondkar (“Rangeela”).
The film was warmly received upon release in India and won Filmfare awards for best actor for Shah, Gulzar’s lyrics, Rahul Dev Burman’s music, Aarti Mukherji’s singing and the critics award for best film.
Kapur’s last release was Studiocanal-Working Title romantic comedy “What’s Love Got to Do with It?,” starring Lily James, Emma Thompson, Shazad Latif, Sajal Aly and Azmi, which debuted at Toronto and opened the Red Sea Film Festival in 2022. It released theatrically worldwide earlier this year. With a box office of $6 million in the U.K., the film is the third-highest grossing British film of the year. It also collected a healthy $2.2 million in Australia.
After “Masoom,” Kapur went on to direct cult Indian superhero film “Mr. India” (1987) and the acclaimed “Bandit Queen” (1994), the biopic of Indian bandit Phoolan Devi. Kapur’s credits also include the Oscar-winning “Elizabeth” (1999), for which he was nominated for best director at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes, and its sequel “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (2007), which won Cate Blanchett her first acting Oscar. The filmmaker also directed one of Heath Ledger’s last films, the 2002 epic “The Four Feathers.”
