Life of Pi

For a long time (see our past posting ) we knew that Shyamalan was working on Yann Martel's 2002 Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi. This is a wonderful tale of a 16-year-old boy's voyage from India to Canada, on a ship carrying animals his father is transporting from a zoo. When the ship sinks mid-ocean, the sole survivor, the boy, is forced to share a lifeboat with a hyena, an injured zebra and a hungry tiger.

But in late October, Searchlight announced the film would go ahead with another director as Shyamalan was going to be busy for many months with the post-production work on his latest suspense film, Lady In The Water. French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who made the Oscar-nominated Amelie which grossed over $100 million worldwide four years ago, will now direct Life Of Pi. He has started working on the script too.

For some time Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron was seriously considered but after an exhaustive six month shoot on Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, he was not rushing into another film. All these changes mean one thing: Jeunet should be extra fast in getting his act together. The movie is set to start production after about six months, with or without the director.