Ash's 'Singularity' on the move again

The long-in-gestation Aishwarya Bachchan film Singularity is finally set to get off the ground by early next year.

Oscar-winning director Roland Joffe, best known in India as the man who helmed City of Joy, will direct the $35 million historical drama. Large portions of the movie are scheduled to be shot at locations in India.

The revival of the delayed project, being produced and co-financed by Belgium's Corsan and India's Neelmudra Entertainment, is good news for Aishwarya fans, especially as her first genuine international film, Doug Lefler's The Last Legion, co-starring Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley, has gone straight to the home video circuit.

Joffe, whose credits include modern classic like The Killing Fields and The Mission, has roped in legendary Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro to shoot Singularity. The 66-year-old Storaro has won Oscars for his work in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Warren Beatty's Reds and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. According to Corsan World Sales, representing Singularity in Cannes, the film will be ready for release before the end of 2008.

Singularity is expected to feature Hollywood star Brendan Fraser opposite Aishwarya though no final word is available at the moment on the rest of the cast. Aishwarya has returned to India after a brief sojourn in Cannes, but as always, she continues to loom over the Croisette.

Her face stares down at passers-by from hoardings and advertising slides along the boulevard and her pictures adorn many a L'Oreal campaign. That apart, UTV Motion Pictures is promoting Aishwarya's upcoming release, Jodhaa Akbar, in Cannes even as director Mani Ratnam is here to present Guru starring the actress and her husband Abhishek Bachchan in the Tous les Cinemas du Monde section on Sunday.