Unless he was dead set on casting Dev Patel, Ang Lee pretty much had no choice but to go with an unknown when finding a lead actor for Life of Pi, his adaptation of Yann Martel's novel about an Indian boy stuck on a rowboat with a number of animals, including a tiger. To be frank about it, there aren't really any other young Indian actors with name recognition out there. The director looked at over 3,000 auditions and now, according to Coming Soon, has settled on 17-year-old Suraj Sharma to take the lead.
An adaptation of Life of Pi has been in the works practically since the moment Martel's novel hit the bestseller list in 2001, with M. Night Shyamalan, Alfonso Cuaron and Jean-Pierre Jeunet all attached to direct at some point. Lee is the only director to make it to the casting stage, though, so there's reason to believe it'll actually happen this time. Life of Pi, which still seems somehow unfilmable given its ocean setting and fable-like story structure, is set for release on December 14, 2012.
