Comedy news: Sequel confirmed for Brit comedy East is East

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The cast of East is East are set to reunite for a sequel, more than a decade after the original film was released.

Producer Lesley Udwin has confirmed that West is West will hit the big screen later this year, with actor Om Puri reprising his role as George Khan, while a third film could also be in the pipeline.

Udwin told Reuters: “I always felt there was a trilogy to be made based on what I had come to learn of the writer's [Ayub Khan-Din] own story when he and I worked together on developing East is East. This is not a cynically made sequel – in other words it has not been made in the spirit of a hoped for repeat of East is East, or else we would have jumped on that bandwagon some years earlier."

Low-budget British comedy-drama East is East was released in 1999 and grossed over more than £10 million in the UK and US. The BAFTFA-winning film, which has also made more than £12 million in rentals, tells the story of a British-Asian family living in Manchester in the seventies.

West is West will be set five years after the original film left off, and will see George and his youngest son Sajid travel to rural Panjab in Pakistan, where they meet his fist wife and daughters whom he abandoned 35 years previously.

“Once there, George is confronted with his own past, finds he has as much to learn about himself as his son does. Essentially, this is a coming-of-age film for both 15-year-old Sajid and also for his 60-year-old father,” Udwin explained.

The project is being funded by BBC Films and individual financiers, although the producer revealed that securing funding was not as easy as she had hoped.

Lalayn Baluch