London, Mar 16 (ANI): The unprecedented success of Slumdog Millionaire has made India an alluring prospect for British filmmakers.

According to Tim Bevan, the co-chairman of British film company Working Title, India is a film destination whose time has come.

“It is the zeitgeist,” Times Online quoted him as saying.

After three years of tough negotiations, the Indian cabinet approved UK-India film co-production treaty in 2008, encouraging filmmakers to make films reflecting the diversity of culture and heritage of both the countries.

With the release of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, the ties seem to have grown stronger.

In the Eighties, Britons made two epics ‘Gandhi’ and ‘A Passage to India’, along with a Bond film ‘Octopussy’ and two big-budget TV mini-series ‘The Far Pavilions, Jewel in the Crown’.

However, it was the rags-to-riches tale of an 18-year-old slum boy that broke the mould.

“It broke the mould,” said David Thompson, who runs his own production house, Origin Pictures.

“Its massive international success has indicated that people are more open to stories from other worlds than we might have been led to believe,” he added.

Thompson hopes that the Slumdog effect will help him raise money for his films in South Asia, which include a detective series and a film about a crazed elephant.

Another highly anticipated Anglo-Indian project in the pipeline is ‘Indian Summer’ by ‘Atonement’ director Joe Wright, which is set against the backdrop of the vast migrations and Hindu-Muslim violence of 1947.

The film will also talk about the love affair between Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first Prime Minister, and Edwina Mountbatten, the glamorous wife of the last British Viceroy.

Bevan expects to shoot the whole film on Indian location.

“We will be working with some of the excellent people there that worked with Danny Boyle on Slumdog and we’ve got the resources of Bollywood, the second-largest film industry in the world,” he said.

British producer Leslee Udwin, from East is East, the hit 1999 comedy about an Anglo-Asian family in Seventies Salford, will be shooting a sequel, West is West, in the Punjab later this year.

On the other hand, ‘Bend it Like Beckham’ director Gurinder Chadha is planning two new projects set in India. (ANI)