Alexander Payne buys movie rights to India-set story

Alexander Payne, the director of George Clooney starrer 'The Descendants' and 'Nebraska', has acquired the movie rights to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's story 'The Judge's Will', which is about an uneasy relationship between a dying Delhi judge and his young wife.
Payne, whose road trip drama 'Nebraska' is already being counted as a strong Oscar contender, will produce the film with his Conde Nast Entertainment and Hominem production banner. Fox Searchlight is in talks to distribute the movie, reported Variety.
'The Judge's Will' was Jhabvala's final published work for The New Yorker before she died.
The story shows the final moments in the relationship between an ailing Delhi judge and his young Bombay wife and her son. As the judge nears death, he wants to be sure that his younger mistress, that he had kept hidden from his wife for many years, is cared for.

Jhabvala, a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist spent many years in India, which formed the backdrop to many of her stories.
She also collaborated with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory on films like Shashi Kapoor-Leela Naidu starrer 'The Householder', 'Shakespeare Wallah', 'Roseland', 'The Europeans', 'Quartet' and 'The Courtesans of Bombay'.
She won Oscar award twice for her screenplay of E M Froster's 'A Room with a View' and 'Howards End', both James-Ivory productions.