Filming begins today (July 14) on Bride And Prejudice - The Bollywood Musical, the Bollywood style re-telling of the Jane Austen classic by the team behind Bend It Like Beckham - director/producer Gurinder Chadha and producer Deepak Nayar.

The film stays faithful to Jane Austen's central story of a mother and father with their unmarried daughters and no dowry to help entice rich, well-bred husbands. The Bennets become the Bakshis, who live in small town India and Darcy is an American, the wealthy son of a hotelier.

Bollywood superstar Aishwarya Rai (Devdas) stars as Lalita and Martin Henderson (The Ring) as Darcy. The cast of UK, Indian and US talent also includes Daniel Gillies, Naveen Andrews, Namrata Shirodkar, Indira Varma, Nadira Babbar, Anupam Kher, Meghna Kothari, Peeya Rai Choudhuri and Nitin Ganatra.

The film will feature song and dance sequences in the Bollywood style, with lyrics by the Akhtar family and music by Anu Malik, India's most prominent composer. The choreographer is the Saroj Khan. The director of photography is Santosh Sivan (Ashoka, The Terrorist).

Bride And Prejudice - The Bollywood Musical will shoot at Ealing Studios from July 14th and on location in the UK until mid-September, when production moves to India, where it will shoot in Mumbai, Amritsar and Goa, before travelling to Los Angeles to complete principal photography.

Pathé Distribution will release the film in the UK and France. Pathé International are selling the film throughout the rest of the world. Miramax will distribute in North and South America and Australia.