Ang Lee's 'Life Of Pi' Will Make World Premiere & Open The 50th New York Film Festival

nullWith Robert Zemeckis' "Flight" starring Denzel Washington announced to close the proceedings last week, the New York Film Festival has gone ahead and unveiled what film will be kicking things off. And it's a doozy.

Ang Lee's highly anticipated, hotly buzzed "Life of Pi" will open the 50th annual New York Film Festival, making its world premiere. This is a massive scoop for the fest, as they've nabbed one of the big Oscar contenders of the year, and it will certainly get things off to a bright start. Based on the best selling book by Yann Martel, the film is led by Suraj Sharma and tells the story of the shipwrecked son of an Indian zookeeper who's stuck on a lifeboat with a 450-pound bengal tiger in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Reaction from footage at CinemaCon earlier this year was ecstatic, with awards season talk already starting. And now Fox has a festival opening night to call all their own to help push the film even more.

Co-starring Irrfan Khan, Gérard Depardieu, Adil Hussain, Shravanthi Sainath and Tabu, "Life of Pi" opens on November 21st. The NYFF runs from September 28th to October 14th.