The director of the Oscar-nominated foreign film Bullhead, Michael R. Roskam, is set to direct his first Hollywood feature film. Focus Features has hired him to direct a film called The Tiger, which is based on a true story about a murderous tiger in Siberia.
The script for film was adapted by Babel scribe Guillermo Arriaga from a book written by John Vaillant. The story "takes place on the Siberian plain, where humans encroach on a tiger’s habitat with tragic results. There is a great male lead role of an animal activist and researcher who must stop a man-eating tiger that is attacking the inhabitants of a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s murdering them, and the team that tracks him know their nemesis is cunning, injured, and starving, making it even more dangerous."
At one point Darren Aronofsky was set to direct the movie, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie attached to star. The latest report says that Pitt and Aronofsky are still attached to produce. Aronofsky dropped out of the project to focus on Noah, and there's no word on if Pitt will still star in the film either.
This is an interesting story that will make for an awesome movie!
Here's the full description of the book:
It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.
As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.
This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.
Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.