“I am very excited, but have to admit that I am also a little nervous,” Basu told IANS in a phone interview. “Everything happened really fast.”
Basu met the director in Mumbai this September. The film is tentatively slated for a 2011 release.
The $33 million movie, written by Ajey Jhankar, is described as a ‘riveting tale of an impossible love set across two time periods and continents.’
It is set against the backdrop of the First Anglo-Maratha War of the 18th century and revolves around four characters ; a British officer in colonial India and the Indian woman he falls in love with, an American marine biologist and his researcher lover - who gets trapped in a wrecked British merchant ship.
The film will be shot in Australia and India. Basu will be flying to Brisbane in the first week of November to shoot for the film.
The actor, who is dating John Abraham, said she would have liked some time to prepare for the role.
“I have only been given eight days to prepare for underwater scenes and horse riding, I wish I had at least a month’s time for preparation,” she said. “There is just no time before I fly out! I have finished all my pending endorsement assignments and now I will try and grasp whatever I can there itself,” she said.
But Basu won’t be the only Indian actor in the cast Singularity. Abhay Deol, who won rave reviews for his work in Dev.D, will also feature in the film. The film’s cast includes Chris Pine, Josh Hartnett, Olga Kurylenko (who starred in Quantum of Solace) and Christopher Egan.
“The script is fantastic. They have a lot of expertise in their field. It’s going to be a whole lot of hard work, and it’s going to be great fun to adapt to their system of working,” she said.
Basu claimed in 2008 that she wasn’t interested in working in Hollywood. “I have worked very hard to build my name here and I’m happy with the kind of work that I’m doing,” Basu told Reuters. “In Hollywood, I have to start from scratch.”
“Here people know my talent and have accepted me but I have to prove myself in the west and they have to accept me too.”
In 2009, reports emerged that Basu would be cast in a film alongside Titanic and The Mummy with the actor Billy Zane, but the project never materialised.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 2nd, 2010.
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