Life of Pi sort of with a capital 'S' – something that would direct my life." He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life, and found that writing the novel met this need. The name of Martel's tiger, Richard Parker, was inspired by a character in Edgar Allan Poe's nautical adventure novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" (1838). In this book, Richard Parker is a mutineer who is stranded and eventually cannibalized on the hull of an overturned ship (and there is a dog aboard who is named Tiger). The author also had in mind another occurrence
Life of Pi (film) the film will earn back its production and marketing costs let alone turn a profit." Pomerantz attributed this to the fact that film was not led by a big name star and faced other winter blockbusters. John Horn and Ben Fritz of "The Los Angeles Times" compared the film to Martin Scorsese's "Hugo", a large-budget 3D film that opened during the 2011 Thanksgiving week. They said that "Life of Pi" could have ended up like "Hugo" by "failing to connect with moviegoers" and become a "financial failure." Similar speculation had been made by other news sources. Whether or not Hurricane