The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel To Cash In Again With 2nd Installment

Retirement can be so lucrative, it is worth a re-do. The surprise box office smash The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel will likely get another whirl. Raking in $130 million worldwide with a budget of only $10 million - those are golden box office numbers. The John Madden-directed film starred Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith and Billy Nighy as English retirees in India.

Screenwriter Ol Parker will write the script for Marigold 2, which does not have an official title. Dench, Nighy, and Smith are apparently willing to head back into a charmed retirement once again, according to Moviescope. It is not known if John Madden will be making a return to the director's chair for the second installment.

Based on author Deborah Moggach's novel The Foolish Things, the box office triumphant was seen by some as evidence that a gap exists in the market for films serving an older demographic.

Maggie Smith recently criticized Hollywood for youth obsession, saying that films that portray older people have historically performed well at the box office.

"It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see," she said. "I can only hope that's correct, because there's an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others," she said. "I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much. But I think of [films like] Cocoon and Driving Miss Daisy and they always seem to be fairly successful, so it's a bit baffling as to why everybody has to be treated as if they were five years old."

Smith is currently starring in the third season of the hit British television series Downton Abbey, which will be released in the U.S. in January. Dench is starring as 007's boss M in the latest Bond pic Skyfall, which opens in the U.S. next month.

[Moviescope, The Guardian]