As the status of women’s football continues to rise, Chadha reveals it’s sparked inspiration for a sequel to Bend It Like Beckham.
Gurinder Chadha’s 2002 comedy drama Bend It Like Beckham is a treasure of a film, which is probably why the filmmaker has never felt compelled to return to make a sequel. After all, how do you follow up on a movie that is so widely beloved, not to mention boundary-shattering in so many ways for so many people, putting less-represented cultures, sports and stories on the screen and doing it in such a successful and acclaimed fashion?
In the two decades since the film’s release, Chadha has focused her energies on other original stories but with women’s football recently seeing another meteoric spike in popularity following the World Cup, the director has been compelled to have a rethink.
“I never really wanted to make a sequel to the film, because I just thought the way Parminder and Keira played it, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Archie Panjabi, I could never really follow that up and create that same magic in the same way,” Chadha revealed to Metro UK in a recent interview. “But with the recent success of football, I just feel like I’m starting to percolate an idea for a possible sequel of some kind.”
It’s clearly early days as far as a sequel is concerned, but there’ll be many a fan of Bend It Like Beckham out there that will be interested to see what happens next. In the meantime, Chadha has a couple of other projects in pre-production according to IMDb, including Pashmina, 'an animated tale of an Indian-American girl who rediscovers her heritage through her magical pashmina.’ Rest assured, if we hear any more regarding a Bend It Like Beckham sequel, you’ll be hearing about it here.
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