Danny Boyle Returns To Mumbai For 'Maximum City'

Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy has revealed to Daily Telegraph that Danny Boyle has bought the rights for another book about India called "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found". Beaufoy will write the script for the new film as Danny Boyle gathers the Slumdog team for 'Maximum City.'

"It was only decided a couple of weeks ago, but I will be writing the script for Danny," he said.

"Maximum City is a non-fiction work, so it will be a huge challenge to find the story in it. It is a wonderful book and I used it in my initial research for Slumdog. There are some great characters in the book, but no stories, so my job will be to get the fictional out of a non-fictional story."

Suketu Mehta's book, which was shortisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, is part travelogue, part memoir and gives a colourful overview of Mumbai's history and people. Meufoy had this to say about adapting the book to film:

Mr Beaufoy said he was discussing the need for huge creative license in adapting Maximum City for the screen. "Suketu is very understanding about my creative input and flexible about many changes. I will have to come up with something to bring together all the characters from the book into something that can make a film."

Mr Beaufoy expects the real star of the film to be Mumbai itself. "It's such a vibrant, young city," he said. "Whereas in London, everything is in a sense hidden away, in Mumbai it's just all there in the open - all the emotion, all the characters."

"The whole Slumdog experience was just extraordinary. It was so exciting but it is not what I'm used to or good at," said Mr Beaufoy, who now lives on a Dutch barge in Wandsworth. "Things have finally settled down now, though, and I can get down to what I actually do, writing. I can't wait."