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Ang Lee Updates His 'Life of Pi' Adaptation, Still Two Years Out

by Alex Billington
October 30, 2009
Source: Digital Spy, Empire

Even though Taking Woodstock wasn't as big of a success as he had hoped, Taiwanese director Ang Lee is moving on forward with his head held high. It was first announced in February that Lee would be the latest to take as shot at adapting Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, about an Indian boy who is the lone survivor of a sunken freighter and winds up sharing a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger. Lee confirmed with two separate outlets that it is his very next project, but it's still a ways out. "I think I'm going to do Life Of Pi," Lee told Digital Spy recently. "A little boy adrift at sea with a tiger. It's a hard one to crack."

It is indeed a hard one to crack, as other great filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan, Alfonso Cuarón and Jean-Pierre Jeunet have all tried adapting it as well, to no success. "It's in the process of setting up," Lee told Empire. "I'm very excited about it, it's a big challenge." So how will he pull it off? "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!" He also told Empire the same thing: "I thought I had a breakthrough, so that was exciting enough for me, but how to make the movie, that's another story. I've got two years to worry about it." I guess he does.

"I haven't done casting yet," Lee also confirmed. But he was able to talk about how he's probably going to pull off the animals. "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." Aw man, CGI animals? I just hope they look realistic or it just won't work. I haven't read the book, although it's quite popular, but I'm wondering what happens. Does this little kid talk to the animals? How will Lee be able to do this without it being boring? I'm already curious, even if it is two years away!

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Robbie

I've read one tiny little piece of the book (we had to read it for school). The part I read was pretty interesting. I'm excited!
Ryan

Life of Pi and The Lovely Bones are the two most amazing books I've ever read, and I highly recommend them to everybody. This will be a hard book to adapt to screen, but Lee is as capable as anybody and I hope he succeeds.
SlashBeast

Didn't like the book, not excited for the movie.
Dave Lister, JMC

"as other great filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan" ... I read that 20 minutes ago and I'm just now up off of the floor, where I fell down laughing, after reading that...
http://www.thetfs.ca Lucas N

Actually, the little boy does not talk to the animals...he is stranded strickly on the boat, isolated from the other animals on the boat, trying to survive as they are. The book is actually my favourite book of all time, it covers introverted themes of identity, its very metaphorical and its extremly affective. I'm looking very forward to this movie, especially in the hands of Ang Lee. N. Night would have killed it, Alfonso would have been good and the Ameile guy would have done wonders with it...but my overall pick for director for this film ever since i read it was Fernando Merielles (City of God, Constant Gardner, Blindness). I think he would have done a great job with this too. Even Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York) could have killed this movie. I just cannot wait until it hits theatres!
joseph

Ang Lee will deliver on this if anyone can. There are a lot of directors but only a few with the mind to adapt something like this to film and get it right. If any of them can do it, he is the one.
JNagarya

I am always impatient for an Ang Lee film. My favorite director becasue he has the unfortunate ability to substitute well-rounded characters in character-driven films for chases and explosions. And even when their are explosions they are named Zhang Ziyi.