Following Brokeback Mountain & Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Academy Award winning director Ang Lee had been talking for years about his “unfilmable film” adaptation of the 2001 novel Life of Pi  - the trailer released today ahead of the scheduled release later this year.
Based on Yann Martel’s Man Booker Prize winning novel the film tells the story of Piscene Molitor Patel “Pi” an Indian boy whose family packs up their zoo of animals and board a ship bound for America, who is hurtled into an epic journey after a disaster leaves him alone with a Bengal tiger in a lifeboat. Pi and the tiger then strike up a surprising friendship which spans two oceans and three continents.
As well as directing his acting debut, Lee had to arrange swimming lessons for Indian actor Suraj Sharma, who plays Pi, but couldn’t swim a stroke prior to the production.
“I met him, I tested him, and he held his breath for 20 seconds. So I got him a swimming coach, work-out coach — every coach,” Lee said. “He gives an emotional performance in a movie that has the look of a family film, but it’s also a movie about big ideas. I hope people will spend weeks talking about it — that’s my idea of a family film.”
