A scene from Life of Pi Photo: Courtesy of Li Qi

 

Life of Pi is yet to hit movie theaters, but fans can already buy the film's trusty lifeboat that becomes home to a young Indian boy shipwrecked with a tiger.

US online retailer Gilt Groupe said on Friday that the lifeboat, replicated from real rafts used between the 1920s and 1950s, is among props from the movie up for sale next week.

is yet to hit movie theaters, but fans can already buy the film's trusty lifeboat that becomes home to a young Indian boy shipwrecked with a tiger.

US online retailer Gilt Groupe said on Friday that the lifeboat, replicated from real rafts used between the 1920s and 1950s, is among props from the movie up for sale next week.

 

The lifeboat is priced at $40,000 in the sale starting on November 19. Proceeds will go toward the Orangutan Foundation International, in recognition of one of the other animals who initially survives with title character Pi in the film.

Other items up for sale include movie posters signed by the director Ang Lee, a collection of vibrant saris, and other props valued between $140 and more than $6,000.

Life of Pi , which stars newcomer Suraj Sharma, opens in US movie theaters on November 21 and is set to screen on the Chinese mainland on November 22.

The movie is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Canadian novelist Yann Martel. The book won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2002.

It tells the adventure of an Indian boy Pi, the story's protagonist, who spends over 200 days with a Bengal tiger on a lifeboat, drifting in the Pacific Ocean, after experiencing a shipwreck.