Now Dickens goes woke: Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha reveals she is remaking A Christmas Carol with Scrooge as an ‘Indian Tory who hates refugees’

One of Charles Dickens’s best-known characters is to be reimagined for a new film as ‘an Indian Tory who hates refugees’.

In the latest example of classic art being rewritten for the woke era, Ebenezer Scrooge – the central character in the much-loved A Christmas Carol – is to take on a decidedly new look.

Film-maker Gurinder Chadha, who is best known for the hugely popular Bend It Like Beckham, told MPs yesterday that her version of the festive tale will be ‘very diverse’.

She also claimed the story overall would be ‘very close to Dickens’s original themes’ given the ‘cost-of-living crisis in Britain’.

Ms Chadha, whose other films include Blinded by the Light and Bhaji on the Beach, was appearing at a hearing of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee to talk about British film and ‘high-end TV’.

She told the committee members: ‘I’m making A Christmas Carol, but my Scrooge is an Indian Tory who hates refugees. But then we go on that journey with them, and hopefully they have reclamation.’ 

The movie director added: ‘I did tell the Prime Minister about it and he said ‘Oh, don’t make me look bad’.

‘And I said: ‘I don’t have to do that for you, Rishi’.’ She said: ‘The film is fun and it’s British, it’s Dickens, it’s very close to Dickens’ original themes, given our cost-of-living crisis in Britain.’

But Ms Chadha said she had ‘struggled to get it off the ground’ partly due to the lead being Indian.

She added: ‘By making it an Indian Scrooge it changes everything in terms of how I get it financed. Suddenly people go ‘It’s not commercial, it’s small, it’s an Indian film’.’

The director, who described it as Dickens ‘done in a totally different cultural way’, said the first person she sent the script to was Stephen Fry. 

She added that Fry had responded ‘super favourably’ and said he had ‘cried buckets’ when he read it because he was so moved.

It is just the latest example of well-known works being adapted with a woke agenda.

Last year, a West End production of the classic children’s story The Wizard Of Oz was criticised for turning modern capitalism into the villain of the piece.

The Mail on Sunday’s theatre critic Robert Gore-Langton wrote at the time: ‘The look is evil American capitalism. The agenda is woke.’

Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University, said: ‘This is another example of the disturbing trend of politicising children’s entertainment.’

For her part, Ms Chadha became well-known after creating Bend It Like Beckham. 

The 2002 film about two young girls who want to be professional footballers, starred British actress Parminder Nagra – who is of Indian Punjabi descent – and Keira Knightley.