Ang Lee's talent search finds lead actor for his next film, Life of Pi

Ever since Yann Martel's Life of Pi was published nine years ago, filmmakers have been lining up to adapt the religiously tinged adventure tale of a boy who is trapped on a tiny lifeboat with a group of zoo animals(a Bengal tiger, a zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan) for 227 days. M. Night Shyamalan was the first, but he passed it up because he didn't want to make another "twist" movie(there's a bit of a swerve at the end). Alfonso Cuaron was next, but ran into schedule conflicts with Children of Men. Jean-Pierre Jeunet was next, but when he couldn't secure the budget he wanted he dropped out.

That left Ang Lee, who's been developing the project for the last year or so. He just recently completed a worldwide talent search for an actor to play the lead role of "Pi" Patel, and apparently found him in newcomer Suraj Sharma. Sharma will be making his acting debut in the $50M+ budgeted flick.

Most of that budget, of which Fox and Lee were having a bit of a struggle over, will go into shooting the film in 3D. Since the entire story basically takes place in the ocean, I'll be very interested to see how they're going to make that work.