The screenplay, written by Ol Parker, is based on the 2004 novel These Foolish Things by novelist Deborah Moggach, and features an ensemble cast consisting of Dev Patel, Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, and Penelope Wilton, as a group of British pensioners moving to a retirement hotel in India, run by the young and eager Sonny, played by Patel.

Producers Graham Broadbent and Peter Czernin first saw the potential for a film in Deborah Moggach's novel with the idea of exploring the lives of the elderly beyond what one would expect of their age group.

With the assistance of screenwriter Ol Parker, they came up with a script in which they take the older characters completely out of their element and involve them in a romantic comedy.

Principal photography began on 10 October 2010 in India, and most of the filming took place in the Indian state of Rajasthan, including the cities of Jaipur and Udaipur.

Evelyn Greenslade, a widowed housewife, must sell her house to pay off her husband's debts; Graham Dashwood, a High Court judge who lived in Jaipur as a child, abruptly retires to return there; Jean and Douglas Ainslie hope to have an affordable retirement, after investing in their daughter's internet business; Muriel Donnelly, a former housekeeper, decides to have a hip operation in India to avoid waiting times; Madge Hardcastle, after several unsuccessful marriages, searches for new romance overseas; and Norman Cousins, an aging lothario, attempts to relive his youth.

After an eventful journey to Jaipur, the retirees discover the hotel is a dilapidated site, run by the energetic but inept manager, Sonny Kapoor.

Graham confides to Evelyn that he is gay, returning to Jaipur to find his long lost Indian lover Manoj, whom he had to leave due to a scandal involving the pair.

The hotel flourishes thanks to Sonny and Muriel's partnership, with the residents staying to enjoy their retirement, Evelyn commenting with the moral, "We get up in the morning, we do our best".

They initially encountered difficulties finding a studio; Working Title Films rejected their proposals, considering it unmarketable, but they eventually aligned with Participant Media, Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ, and Blueprint Pictures.

[5] To lead the project, the producers Broadbent and Czernin approached John Madden, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Shakespeare in Love in 1998.

Madden considered the characters in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel to be of "an analogous kind of geographical suspension", which have "entered a strange world removed from their former reality, cut off from their past, where they have to invent a new life for themselves".

[4] Dench and fellow cast members Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Tom Wilkinson, and director John Madden jumped at the opportunity to all work together for the first time in one film.

[6] The filmmakers determined early on that the role of Sonny was crucial to the outcome of the picture, and they selected Dev Patel, who at the time was still revelling in the success of Slumdog Millionaire.

Dench described Patel as a "born comedian", and Madden considered him to be a "comic natural—a sort of Jacques Tati figure, with amazing physical presence and fantastic instincts".

The place where Sonny and Sunaina meet in the film was shot nearby at the stepwell Panna Meena ka Kund near Amer Fort, a 10th-century establishment noted for its "ten stories of pale golden stone steps.

"[10] Production designer Alan MacDonald, who won Best Art Direction in a Contemporary Film from the Art Directors Guild for his work,[13] was brought in to embellish the interiors, intentionally making it clash with "interesting furniture inspired by colonial India, mismatched local textiles, all mixed together with modern plastic bits and pieces, with everything distressed and weather beaten.

[22] In the United Kingdom, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel came in second to The Woman in Black at the box office during its first week, earning £2.2 million.

Its consensus states "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel isn't groundbreaking storytelling, but it's a sweet story about the senior set featuring a top-notch cast of veteran actors.

He declared the film "a charming, funny and heartwarming movie [and] a smoothly crafted entertainment that makes good use of seven superb veterans.

"[35] Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips wrote that "as two-hour tours go, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel goes smoothly."

He went on to opine that the film appeared "oddly like an Agatha Christie thriller with all the pasteboard characters, 2D backstories and foreign locale, but no murder.