Looks like Ang Lee has hit a stumbling block in his adaptation of Yann Martel’s popular fantasy adventure novel “Life Of Pi.”
The project is being developed from a script by David Magee over at Fox 2000 and had reportedly been eyeing an August start date with a $70 million dollar budget upon approval from the studio.
However, Fox 2000 are now evidently reluctant to throw that amount of money into the adaptation with progress immediately halted until filmmakers can “reconfigure the budget.” Lee’s probably just now realizing why M. Night Shyamalan, Alfonso Cuaron and Jean-Pierre Jeunet failed with their own adaptations of Martel’s novel before him but the fact that Fox honcho Elizabeth Gabler is apparently keen on an adaptation hopefully bodes well for the production.
The novel follows the story of the son of an Indian zookeeper named Pi who is shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and shares his lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger. The film would definitely require an ambitious and high tech undertaking and Lee had previously revealed plans to use CGI for the animals, while eschewing name actors for the lead role.
Most recently, it also emerged that Lee plans to shoot the whole thing in 3D. We’re kind of excited to see what Lee can do with this ocean-set tale. Hopefully it can overcome these financial hurdles but, if not, Lee always has the “tragically, suicidally depressing” script from usual collaborator James Schamus ready to go.
