According to The Bookseller, Yann Martel’s crazy popular Man Booker-winning Life of Pi is finally going before the cameras, courtesy of Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee.
Filmmakers such as M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense), Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie) are among those who have expressed an interest in the story before.
Lee, whose credits include Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution, told [the website Digital Spy]: “I think I’m going to do Life of Pi… A little boy adrift at sea with a tiger. It’s a hard one to crack.”
The project is still at the scripting stage, and no casting has taken place yet.
Though Lee also directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, he has never, to our knowledge, worked with an actual tiger before, so it’s hard to know if he’s the right man for the job. For our money, you couldn’t entrust the book to a surer bet than Caroll Ballard, who directed what is possibly the greatest boy-and-his-animal movie ever made, The Black Stallion. And just a few years ago, Ballard proved he could work wonders with big cats in the barely released Duma, about a boy and his cheetah.
