Tabu Signed On As Pi’s Mother? Sushant Singh and Sonu Sood In Contention For Father Role
With newcomer Suraj Singh cast as the lead in his 3D adaptation of Yann Martel‘s cult favorite “Life Of Pi,” Ang Lee is reportedly eyeing a host of experienced Bollywood thespians for the roles of the protagonist’s parents with leading men Sushant Singh and Sonu Sood among those battling it out for the role of Pi Pitel’s father, and popular actress Tabu rumored to be already signed on to play the protagonist’s mother.
The trio are renowned, award-winning thespians in Bollywood and are surely licking their lips at the prospect of joining the film’s inexperienced lead after seeing what transpired from the success of Danny Boyle‘s “Slumdog Millionaire” — Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Anil Kapoor have all flourished in Hollywood since. Currently armed with a script by David Magee (“Finding Neverland“) and DoP Claudio Miranda (“The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button“), it’ll be fascinating to see how Lee goes about adapting the fantastical tale which has already seen the talented likes of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alfonso Cuaron and M. Night Shyamalan take a crack at the material.
“Life Of Pi,” of course, follows the story of the son of an Indian zookeeper named Pi who is shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and finds himself stuck on a lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger. Here’s a more detailed synopsis courtesy of Amazon:
The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting “religions the way a dog attracts fleas.” Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker… After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat’s sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive.
At one stage, it seemed like Lee was set to falter just as many had before him after his adaptation was seeminglyput on hold due to budgetary concerns, but things quickly turned around with the 3D, CGI-laden shoot now set to begin on location in Pondicherry, in the south of India, this coming January. The film will hit theaters on December 14, 2012. [TimesOfIndia]
