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 Cuar?n 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!
Note: CGI animals? - Please Ang no. Don't ruin it. Don't ruin it with Cgi Animals...