Scrooge is a Tory who hates refugees in Christmas Carol remake
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Ebenezer Scrooge will be portrayed as a “Tory who hates refugees” in an upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
Gurinder Chadha, who directed the 2002 hit Bend It Like Beckham, has revealed to MPs that she is working on a “diverse” version of Charles Dickens’ festive story
The novel’s main protagonist, Scrooge, will be portrayed as a “Tory who hates refugees” in the new film, Chadha said.
Chadha said the production will otherwise stick to Dickensian themes given the “cost of living crisis in the UK”.
The director said her misanthropic Tory lead will be played by an actor of Indian descent, and suggested that the film could be continued as a critique of Rishi Sunak.
Speaking to MPs on the Digital Media and Sport Committee, Chadha said: “I’m making A Christmas Carol but my Scrooge is an Indian Tory who hates refugees.”
Explaining her choice for the ethnicity of the lead actor, the director said: “I’m still trying to make it diverse.”
Chadha claims to have warned Sunak about the production, saying: “I did tell the Prime Minister about it, and he said: ‘Don’t make me look bad.’
“And I said: ‘I don’t have to do that for you Rishi’.”
The director said that the film, which will be aired on Netflix, was otherwise “fun” and “British”, and stuck closely to Dickensian themes “given our cost of living crisis in the UK”.
Chadha spoke to MPs about the difficulty of having films financed when the lead roles are taken by ethnic minority actors.
She explained that Christmas films come with a financial incentive, as classics of the genre are perennial, and will be watched and relicensed every year
The British-Indian director also told MPs that she is working on a film for Disney, and intends to give her own spin on the Disney Princess, stating that the production is “about a princess who’s Indian”.
Chadha has revised classic tropes and formats in the past, including with her 2004 film Bride and Prejudice, which makes the Bennets in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice a British-Indian family.
In 2017, she directed the film The Viceroy’s House, starring Hugh Bonneville, which followed the lives of Lord and Lady Mountbatten in the final days of the British Raj.
Her breakthrough film, the 2002 comedy Bend It Like Beckham, follows an aspiring British-Indian footballer fighting against her family’s disapproval. The film starred Kiera Knightley in one of her earliest successes.
Chadha later said the film was not about football, but racism, saying: “It’s about racism.
“It’s dressed up as a comedy but it’s actually about parents protecting children from racism. But if I had gone out and said this was a film about racism, it would have never got financed, never.”
The director spoke to MPs on Tuesday about the current state of the British film industry, and television production, warning that it is easier to make films with white stars, rather than casting actors from ethnic minorities.
She explained this, saying that there is a “perception that people won’t want to see a film that culturally does not reflect them”.
