According to sources, Taiwanese director Ang Lee is slated to helm the long-awaited adaptation of Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, the Life of Pi.

M. Nigh Shyamalan who was originally slated to write and direct the movie, has since abandoned the project to focus on the NickToon martial art film, The Last Airbender. Now it appears as if Lee is set to take on the project which has been kicked around in development hell for quite some time now.

Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure tale about an Indian boy named Piscine “Pi” Molitor who survives 227 days after a shipwreck, while stranded on a boat in the Pacific with an orangutan named Orange Juice, a zebra, a hyena, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Yes… I am not making this up.

According to IMDB, Life of Pi currently currently has a release date of 2011.