Tom Ford as a film director?

Fashion designer Tom Ford is getting the cast in place for his long-awaited move into movies.

Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode are set to star in "A Single Man," Ford's adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood novel.

Published in 1964, the novel centers on a gay man who, after the sudden death of his partner, is determined to persist in his usual routine, which is seen in the span of a single, ordinary day in southern California.

Firth is the gay man, an Englishman and professor who feels like an outsider in Los Angeles. Goode is the boyfriend who dies in a car accident and appears in flashbacks. Moore plays a friend of the professor.

Ford, who was recently ranked 12th in a list of the 49 men who most influenced the way other men thought, behaved and shopped, adapted the screenplay for the independently financed project with David Scearce.

Ford rose to the top of the fashion world with a 10-year run at Gucci, a period that turned around the fortunes of the Italian fashion house owned by France's PPR (PRTP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

He stepped down in 2004 following a failure to agree contract terms and in 2005 set up his own design line with up-market stores now in New York and Milan and planned for over a dozen locations including London, Los Angeles, and Dubai.

One of Ford's well-advertised customer is Daniel Craig who wears Tom Ford outfits in the new James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace."

After leaving Gucci, Ford also signed on with Creative Artists Agency with the aim to slide into the director's chair.

Firth was last seen in "Mamma Mia!" and Moore in "Blindness." Goode plays Ozymandias in next year's "Watchmen."