Hollywood plans to take Bhopal to the screen, starring Aishwarya Rai

Windfall is scheduled to start filming in the Fall of 2005, producer Zachary Coffin told The Indian Express from Bhopal, where he announced the film today to coincide with the tragedy’s 20th anniversary.

‘‘Rai was my first choice and she agreed six months ago, once I discussed the script with her,’’ says Coffin, adding that he had ‘‘the most intense 20 minutes of grilling of my life,’’ once he approached Rai with the idea.

‘‘She agreed immediately to do the role after that,’’ says the CEO of Zachary Coffin Productions, and General Partner of Coffin Capital, who has visited India five times, twice for this film. Apart from being an accounting expert, Coffin’s media credits include co-producing radio show Gandhi in the Park for three years in New York.

Inspired by true events, Windfall is the story of a young woman’s search for her father, a plant manager on duty the night of the disaster. Rai plays the lead role of Jasmine Singh, an Indian-American born in Bhopal but raised in Beverly Hills. At the start of the film, she is engaged to a wealthy American, and her life goes through several changes as various events unfold around her father.

The male lead is likely to be played by an A-list Hollywood star, says Coffin, adding that he has in mind actors like Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, among others. Approximately two thirds of the movie will be filmed in America, and the rest in India.

Coffin says the purpose of the film is to highlight the plight of the victims before a global audience. ‘‘This spot (the defunct Union Carbide factory in Bhopal) may well be the most symbolically significant square mile on the earth,’’ says Coffin. ‘‘For, what happened here with Union Carbide is directly connected to what happened in the US with Enron, Tyco and Halliburton, and what is happening around the world. Bhopal has become a metaphor for our times. It is the story of the most blatant example of corporate injustice, the most glaring instance of globalisation gone awry. It is a story whose time has come.’’

Rai, who will be next seen in the US in Bride and Prejudice to be released in February, and later in Chaos with Meryl Streep, said in a statement that she saw this movie as spreading awareness of the tragedy. ‘‘This film will be inspiring. I hope the film’s success will draw attention to the need of victims in Bhopal, and to those everywhere who have suffered from injustice,’’ she said.

Windfall will rely in part on the non-fiction book The Bhopal Tragedy: What Really Happened and What It Means for American Workers and Communities at Risk, by Ward Morehouse and Arun Subramaniam, that came out in 1986. Documents recently released under the US Freedom of Information Action will supplement the book with newly-revealed information about the tragedy.