Hollywood Mining Another Indian Tale: Ang Lee To Direct ‘Life Of Pi’ For Fox 2000

COMMENTS (16)

• Ang Lee will be a good choice. I was jazzed when I heard originally that Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) was going to do it though, he would have been ideal.

  Comment by nyguy — Tuesday February 17, 2009 @ 6:27pm PST  Reply to this post

• We’ve outsourced everything else…might as well outsource the Oscar for Best Pic…Best Actress…etc…etc…

  Comment by oscar — Tuesday February 17, 2009 @ 7:15pm PST  Reply to this post

• Is this Sign #5 that Hollywood is realizing that M Night really sucks as a filmmaker? After Unbreakable, Signs, The Happening, and The Lady in the Water, of course.

  Comment by WhateverMan — Tuesday February 17, 2009 @ 8:30pm PST  Reply to this post

• It’s pleasant. It would have been more pleasant had two of the previously announced directors made the movie. Jeunet, as mentioned above, and Alfonso Cuaron.

  Comment by harley — Tuesday February 17, 2009 @ 8:42pm PST  Reply to this post

• I’m really excited about Johnny Depp and Mira Nair teaming up for SHANTARAM.

  INDIANS REPRESENT!!!!!!!!

  Comment by UGLY DEAF MUSLIM PUNK GURL! — Tuesday February 17, 2009 @ 9:08pm PST  Reply to this post

• They should have waited for Tarsem to finish work on “War of the Gods”.

  Tarsem’s “The Fall” was a nice little movie that got shafted for any technical awards at the Academy this year. No noms for Cinematography or Costume Design? Seriously?

  Comment by B- — Tuesday February 17, 2009 @ 9:30pm PST  Reply to this post

• Nikki, when you say “it makes sense that Hollywood is mining all the Indian stories it has at its studios” it of course actually makes no sense at all unless Hollywood has not a single creative bone in its body and is stupid enough to think the only reason Slumdog is likely to win the Oscar is because of the location it is set in.

  Coming Soon – Rajiv Patel: Mumbai Store Detective????

  Comment by DH — Tuesday February 17, 2009 @ 11:13pm PST  Reply to this post

• Jeunet would have been nice, but at least that hack M. Night isn’t going to get his gimmicky mitts on this project.

  Comment by Johnny Marshall — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 2:25am PST  Reply to this post

• Why does this town keep sucking Ang Lee’s dick? It’s kind of embarassing when you really look at it. Most of his output is so stiff and suffocating. And come clean folks, Crouching Tiger is one of the most overrated pieces of shit ever made, looks great for sure, but it doesn’t hold up. AT ALL!

  The only decent movie he’s made was Brokeback, that’s it, and that was mostly due to the photography and the performances!

  Comment by Alboone — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 6:28am PST  Reply to this post

• What does this mean for the collaberation between Ang Lee and Focus Features president James Schamus, which goes all the way back to Lee’s first film “Pushing Hands”? Schamus has produced and/or co-written all of Lee’s movies, and when Schamus’ and Ted Hope’s Good Machine was folded into Universal Focus to become Focus Features, Lee went along for the ride. Now that he’s doing this next project for Fox 2000, does this mean he won’t be working with Schamus on it? (Or does Focus have some kind of a stake?)

  Comment by Pokey — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 8:16am PST  Reply to this post

• Stay classy, Alboone.

  Comment by jdog — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 8:45am PST  Reply to this post

• Alboone: Lee’s Sense and Sensibility remains the best Jane Austen adaptation yet made. That film should never be discounted, either.

  Lee has a rather languid style that has not been well-suited to some of the projects he’s chosen, especially Hulk. Perhaps Lee is a better choice than a director whose formal tics are highly codified, such as Jeunet. Lee will more likely let the source material breathe through than imposing his style upon it. I can see this as promising.

  Comment by Name — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 9:11am PST  Reply to this post

• I enjoyed the book, but I don’t see how it’s filmable.

  Comment by Nick — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 9:23am PST  Reply to this post

• More fearful cowardly deal-making leading to sucky movies. Hey, I got a movie. “Pashram Ngherdi: Indian Mall Cop who screws vampires.”

  Comment by CinefileX — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 9:42am PST  Reply to this post

• This is AWESOME news. Ang Lee is clearly one of our most gifted filmmakers…. and when I heard years ago that M Night was going to direct, my first thought was OH DEAR GOD NO!!! This book is beyond special… it’s one of the few pure masterpieces of the past decade. Night would have butchered it.

  Now it will be awesome. Thank goodness when Hollywood gets things right every once in awhile…

  Comment by Jojo — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 9:46am PST  Reply to this post

• Dev Patel for Pi Patel?

  Comment by snowback — Wednesday February 18, 2009 @ 11:22am PST  Reply to this post