NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone is in negotiations to make a movie about the Bhopal gas disaster, which killed more than 22,000 people, and Penelope Cruz is being talked about for a leading role.


French author Dominique Lapierre, in India for the release of "It was five past midnight in Bhopal", said he was in negotiations with Stone to make a film of his book, which recounts the horrors of the 1984 tragedy in the central Indian city of Bhopal.


"Jeremy Irons and Penelope Cruz have expressed interest to act in the movie," Lapierre told reporters.


Cruz has not been out of the spotlight since she won accolades for her leading role in Captain Corelli's Mandolin and found romance with Tom Cruise following his breakup from Nicole Kidman.


Lapierre said the Spanish screen siren was likely to play the role of a poor Indian girl who gets married on the night of the disaster.


"Cinema is a long process and I can't set a timeframe for when this film will hit the screens," Lapierre said.


Nearly 4,000 people were killed and tens of thousands injured when a chemical tank at the Union Carbide pesticide factory leaked 5,000 tonnes of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas in the central state of Madhya Pradesh.


DEATH TOLL SOARED


The death toll mounted to over 22,000 in the 12 years after the incident, the world's worst industrial disaster.


"It was five past midnight in Bhopal" was co-authored by Lapierre's nephew, Spanish writer Javier Moro, and was released in India on Wednesday.


Lapierre said the book, his third to be set in India, was a bestseller in France and Spain after it was released there six months ago.


The book is set to hit the stands in Italy, Britain and the United States later this year.


Two earlier films based on the work of Lapierre, the French journalist-turned-author, were mired in controversy in India.


"Mother Teresa: In the Name of God's Poor", a 1997 television dramatisation of the life of the Nobel peace prize winner, drew criticism from the nun's Missionaries of Charity.


The order said the script sensationalised her life and Mother Teresa had withdrawn permission to Lapierre to make the film.


"City of Joy", a feature film based on Lapierre's book of the same name about Calcutta's teeming slums, was attacked by local residents who accused it of exaggerating the eastern Indian city's poverty.