The New York Post reports that Saroo Brierley’s remarkable autobiography, A Long Way Home, is going to be adapted for the big screen. Purchased at Cannes for $12 million and starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, the film, renamed Lion, will tell the tale of how Brierley lost his home and family only to find them 25 years later.
In A Long Way Home, Brierley recounts how he and his brother would ride trains as beggars in rural India. In a moment of confusion, the 4-year-old Brierley hopped on the wrong train, and was carried over 1,000 miles to Kolkata. (And you thought falling asleep and missing your stop was inconvenient.) After landing in an orphanage, he was adopted by an Australian family and grew up a continent away in Tasmania.
Although he was separated from them at a young age, Brierley never forgot his home or his family. As an adult, he dedicated “countless hours” trying to use Google Earth to identify landmarks he remembered, despite not knowing the name of the town where he was born. Miraculously, he found his way back to his birthplace, and eventually was reunited with his mother.