Bring a teen and 450 pound Bengal tiger in the same frame and some would say that Ang Lee might not be the most apt at making this happen. Thankfully the auteur filmmaker recovered just fine with a trio of Focus Features projects under his belt, but he was burned at the stake for his version of Hulk. Lee will need to reacquaint himself with green screen technologies and computer generated stuff if he decides to actually take on a project which at one time or another had people like Shyamalan, Cuaron and Jeunet attached to direct. Variety reports that the helmer would supervise a new script for Life of Pi by a scribe to be hired shortly.
Based on Yann Martel’s award-winning novel, this is an absurdist and yet philosophical story which follows “Pi”, a 16-year-old Indian boy whose passage to a new life in America aboard a freighter ends in shipwreck in the Pacific. Left to fend for himself on a 26-foot life raft with a hyena, an orangutan, an injured zebra and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, Pi survives for the better part of a year through faith and guile, though Richard eventually kills off and dines on the rest of Pi’s shipmates.
Slumdog Millionaire‘s Dev Patel who kind of looks sixteen, and is hopefully being told not to shave, might be the perfect fit for the lead character. I’m assuming his agent is already in talks with Fox again — Patel’s fresh face and youthful features have already connected with mainstream audiences. Oddly enough, Patel has just signed up for Shyamalan’s current project.
