The mathematical constant known as pi, which describes the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, is famous among nerdy schoolchildren and academics for being a number that goes on forever.
And so, it would appear, is the process of adapting a film from Life of Pi, Yann Martel's prize-winning fantastical yarn.
Eight years after its publication and six years after it was optioned by the specialty film division of Twentieth Century Fox, Life of Pi has a new prospective director: Ang Lee, the Chinese-born auteur who won an Oscar for his direction of Brokeback Mountain.
Lee, whose last movie was the sexually provocative Lust, Caution, is in the final stages of talks to direct the film.
Before he shoots a single frame, though, he will need a new script. Previous efforts have been scuttled, including adaptations by Dean Georgaris (The Manchurian Candidate), M. Night Shyamalan (The Happening) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amélie).
Gil Netter, who first optioned the book and has overseen all of the scripts, is still in the producer's seat.
Life of Pi, which rocketed Martel to worldwide attention when it won the 2002 Man Booker Prize, presents numerous challenges to filmmakers. It is an allegorical coming-of-age tale about the son of an Indian zookeeper who, after his family sets out to move to Canada accompanied by their animal menagerie, becomes the sole human survivor of a shipwreck.
The novel's central section tracks the boy, Pi Patel, struggling to survive nine months on a life raft afloat in the Pacific Ocean in the dangerous company of a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra and a 450-pound tiger named Richard Parker.
"If Fox closes a deal with Ang Lee, I'll be very happy," Martel said via e-mail. "He's a surperb director with a varied and dazzling output: Crouching Tiger, Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain, among others. He'd do a great job with Life of Pi."
Yesterday, Lee's publicist said Life of Pi could be the director's next project. "If the rewrite works, I suspect it probably will be," Simon Halls said. Lee himself was unavailable for comment, spending long days in the edit suite on his forthcoming film, Taking Woodstock, which is due out in August.
