“Life Of Pi,” the award winning novel published way back in 2001, won author Yann Martel international acclaim and earned him the U.K.’s Man Booker Prize. The fantastical story, about the son of an Indian zookeeper who is shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and shares his lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger, quickly had studios and directors circling the project. At various points in the film’s development M. Night Shyamalan, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Alfonso Cuaron all showed interest, but it’s Ang Lee who’s finally saddled up with the film, and seems to be making more progress than any one before him.
Speaking with Digital Spy, Lee has revealed he’s now turning in his first draft of the script, but that he’s still a long way from getting the film in front of cameras.”This is two years ahead of me,” Lee said when asked when we can expect the film. It seems just figuring out the narrative arc has proven to be difficult, but Lee thinks he’s finally got it. Sort of. He says, “I think I’ve cracked the structure of the movie and I’ll figure out how to do it later. How exactly I’m going to do it, I don’t know!” We know what he means. Given that the bulk of the story takes place on a lifeboat, with a single character in the middle of the ocean, it will be a “Cast Away”-sized task to keep the film compelling for audiences.
Lee is still licking his wounds following the failure of this summer’s “Taking Woodstock” but given how much he’s talking up “Life Of Pi” — which hasn’t even reached pre-production stages — his excitement is palpable.
Update: Maybe Lee has figured out how to do it after all. In an interview with Empire, Lee says he’ll be using CGI animals or at least some CGI. “In the old days I think maybe you wouldn’t have needed it, but nowadays the animal rights people wouldn’t let you do it, so we’ve got to go more expensively. [There’ll be] some supplementary CGI, I think.” Maybe he can do it ‘Where The Wild Things Are” style with some costumes and CGI? Just don’t make ’em look like “New Moon” wolves, please.’
