Life Of Pi earns Rs 19.5 crore in first weekend at box office

Life of Pi, Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee's fantasy adventure is busy minting money at the Indian box office, with even top directors like Karan Johar and Shekhar Kapur showering praise on the latest release.

The film has earned Rs 19.5 crore in the country in its opening weekend. The movie, released on November 23, in 2D and 3D format, had grossed Rs 5 crore on the opening day itself.

Life of Pi is based on Yann Martel's Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, featuring debutant Suraj Sharma, Tabu and Irrfan Khan in prominent roles.

The playful, not-always-reliable narrator here is Pi Patel - played by Sharma as a teen and as a grown man reflecting back on his adventure by Irrfan Khan. As a youth, Pi, his parents and brother set out from India, where the family runs a zoo in a botanical garden, to Canada. Pi's father brings along some of his menagerie on their voyage, including a tiger named Richard Parker with which Pi had a terrifying encounter as a boy.

Their ship sinks in a storm, with Pi the only human survivor aboard a lifeboat with an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg and Richard Parker. Survival of the fittest thins their numbers into a life-and-death duel, and eventually an uneasy truce of companionship, between Richard Parker and Pi.

Life of Pi opened in the country in four languages - English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

Capturing the hillside town of Munnar along with the elegance of Puducherry, Life of Pi is said to have received the second highest opening of all time for Fox Star Studios after Avatar.

With inputs from IANS