The Oscar-winning actor will appear opposite Amitabh Bachchan, the elder statesman of Indian cinema, in Teen Patti, a thriller about a reclusive maths genius who becomes involved in the world of gambling. The name is a reference to a popular game of three-card poker.
The film represents a milestone in the melding of Bollywood with Western cinema, the first release intended as a crossover feature with appeal to both audiences. It is also the first Indian movie to feature a Western actor in a lead role.
Making a Bollywood film has been in Sir Ben's mind since he starred as Mahatma Gandhi in Sir Richard Attenborough's classic 1982 film, which was garlanded with eight Oscars including best picture and best actor.
"Ever since I left India after filming Gandhi, I wanted to participate," he said. "I can't go back to India as a tourist. I can't do it. I need to be creating or doing or telling a story in India."
The project takes the actor back to his roots on the subcontinent. He was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji, the son of a Kenyan Indian doctor who moved to Britain and married an English woman. He anglicised his name at the beginning of his career.
In Teen Patti he plays Perci Trachtenberg, regarded as the world's greatest living mathematician, who befriends Bachchan, a shy fellow academic. The independent film is a far cry from the all-singing, all-dancing fare usually associated with Bollywood.
Sir Ben was promoting the film in Cannes, where a Bollywood blockbuster featuring a cameo from Sylvester Stallone is also being touted along the Croisette. The thriving Indian film industry made a revenue of $2.27 billion last year, up 13 per cent on 2007. Bollywood is increasingly bankrolling Hollywood productions, and Sir Ben said Western cinema would benefit from being "Indian-ised".
"This year we will find that a great deal of financing for big films will come out of India and will involve some artistic control on the part of Indian producers, which is only right and will be extremely welcome and necessary. We need that injection into our films in the West - that originality and lack of cynicism.
"India has the ability to combine ancient tradition and mythology with something that is absolutely modern - that is effortless in India, and that's what I find attractive."
The extraordinary success of Slumdog Millionaire proved that global audiences love films with an Indian heart, an antidote to the hackneyed fare often produced by Hollywood.
"Because the economic climate is so terrifying, we are going for the soft and safe option which tends to be a copy of what's gone before," Sir Ben said. "You end up with a copy of a copy of a copy and it loses its surprise and its integrity.
"Slumdog Millionaire is a story about connection and memory. It's beautiful. Pitch that idea and you'd have heard, 'Next!' But it won the Academy Award.
"When I was on my way to film in India a long time ago, somebody said if you stand on the corner of Connaught Place [in Delhi] for two minutes you will see the whole world pass by. Every form of human life is there. You stand on the corner of anywhere in LA or New York or Paris or London and you will see more of the same pass by."
The film is from the production company of Ambika Hinduja, daughter of Ashok P Hinduja, the youngest of the four brothers who make up the family of business moguls. She was born in Mumbai and studied at the London International Film School.
She said: "Most Indian film production houses make films that appeal to an Indian audience. Our ambition is to make films that appeal not only to an Indian audience but also to global audiences."
