Academy-award-winning director Ang Lee will soon begin shooting for his ambitious new project, the silver screen adaptation of Booker Prize winning novel ‘Life of Pi’, in the picturesque locales of Kerala.
The Taiwanese-American director had begun auditions for the lead in the film earlier this year and had made a stop-over at Mumbai for the Indian round of casting and later scouted for locations in Puducherry, where part of the film will be shot.
Contrary to reports that the film is on hold due to budget disputes with the producers, 20th Century Fox, the filming will commence soon and Lee is currently dividing his time between New York and Southern India.
“Lee has completed his recce in Kerala and Puducherry.
He was in Kerala just the past week and he will soon begin shooting there. The film’s spirit is Indian, it is going to be a Indian story directed by Ang Lee,” said a source close to the director.
Lee whose credits include films like ‘Brokeback Mountain’, ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ and ‘Hulk’ among others had taken over the project from Jean-Pierre Jeunet in 2009.
The film is an adaptation of the book by Canadian author Yann Martel. The novel, which is set in Puducherry, narrates the ordeals of a young Indian boy, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, sharing a lifeboat with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan and a tiger.