Aishwarya Rai announced yesterday that she will be the executive producer and star of a film dealing with the 1984 tragedy in Bhopal. As reported by emediawire.com:

The fiction feature film [titled “Windfall“], a murder mystery inspired by true events, is set mostly in present day America, with flashbacks to Bhopal. Movie is the story of a young womanÂ’s search for her father, a plant manager on duty the night of the disaster. Ms. Rai plays the lead role, Jasmine Singh, an Indian-American debutante born in Bhopal but raised in Beverly Hills.

“The story of the disaster in Bhopal is all too tragic,” said Ms. Rai. “But this film will be inspiring. The story of a young woman’s search for her father, the love story with her American fiancé and the issues she goes through as a survivor of the disaster – I simply had to be involved. And I hope the films’ success will draw attention to the need of victims in Bhopal, and to those everywhere who’ve suffered from injustice.”

“This is a heroic role, like Erin Brockovich, but on an epic scale – THE INSIDER meets TITANIC,” said producer Zachary Coffin. “Aishwarya was our first, last and only choice to play the lead, and I truly believe this will be the most inspiring performance of her career yet.”

The INSIDER meets TITANIC? Surely we can minimize the latter? The film will borrow facts from a 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. The film is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2005.