
TAIPEI, CHINA – NOVEMBER 20: Chinese director Ang Lee arrives at the red carpet of the 47th Golden Horse Award ceremony at Taoyuan on November 20, 2010 in Taipei, Taiwan of China.
ChinaFotoPress/Getty ImagesAng Lee‘s upcoming 3D film, Life of Pi, is getting the special trailer treatment, according to The New York Times.
Twentieth Century Fox has decided to roll out a series of trailers featuring uncut scenes from the movie so that the 3D special effects have a better chance to shine in theaters. Life of Pi is adapted from Yann Martel’s adventure novel of the same name about a boy stranded on a boat with a Bengal tiger.
The Times reports that Fox will debut the first preview beginning Friday before 3D screenings of the sci-fi film Prometheus; the studio will also partner other clips with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (release date: June 22) and Ice Age: Continental Drift (July 13).
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“This film is special and different, and so we didn’t want to give people the same-old, same-old,” said Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment.
The studio will also release a conventional trailer ahead of Life of Pi’s Nov. 21 release date. As far as the uncut 3D versions, Fox intends to reveal scenes in which a cargo ship filed with zoo animals sinks in the ocean.
The strategy echoes what Fox did with Avatar in 2009 by previewing a 15-minute teaser in theaters to drum up interest five months before the release of the 3D-enhanced James Cameron blockbuster.
Earlier this year, Fox had a Pi presentation at CinemaCon where the movie was very well received and left with awards-contender buzz. The studio recently announced that it had moved up the picture’s opening up from Dec. 21 in order to avoid the Christmas rush of highly-anticipated releases such as Warner’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien book, and Universal’ musical Les Miserables.