Chockstone Pictures has acquired the film rights to Monte Reel’s non-fiction book “The Last of the Tribe: The Epic Quest to Save a Lone Man in the Amazon.” Doug Liman (”The Bourne Identity”) is attached to direct. Reel, the South American correspondent for the Washington Post, chronicles the search for the last surviving member of an Amazon tribe from the perspective of the government agents charged with both verifying his existence and preserving his way of life. Ed Saxon is producing alongside Liman, Dave Bartis, Steve Schwartz and Paula Mae Schwartz. Mark Bailey is adapting the screenplay.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118021711.html?categoryId=4076&cs=1
Book Jacket:
Throughout the centuries, the Amazon has yielded many of its secrets, but it still holds a few great mysteries. In 1996 experts got their first glimpse of one: a lone Indian, a tribe of one, hidden in the forests of southwestern Brazil. Previously uncontacted tribes are extremely rare, but a one-man tribe was unprecedented. And like all of the isolated tribes in the Amazonian frontier, he was in danger. Resentment of Indians can run high among settlers, and the consequences can be fatal. The discovery of the Indian prevented local ranchers from seizing his land, and led a small group of men who believed that he was the last of a murdered tribe to dedicate themselves to protecting him. These men worked for the government, overseeing indigenous interests in an odd job that was part Indiana Jones, part social worker, and were among the most experienced adventurers in the Amazon. They were a motley crew that included a rebel who spent more than a decade living with a tribe, a young man who left home to work in the forest at age fourteen, and an old-school sertanista with a collection of tall tales amassed over five decades of jungle exploration. Their quest would prove far more difficult than any of them could imagine. Over the course of a decade, the struggle to save the Indian and his land would pit them against businessmen, politicians, and even the Indian himself, a man resolved to keep the outside world at bay at any cost. It would take them into the furthest reaches of the forest and to the halls of Brazil’s Congress, threatening their jobs and even their lives. Ensuring the future of the Indian and his land would lead straight to the heart of the conflict over the Amazon itself.
A heart-pounding modern-day adventure set in one of the world’s last truly wild places, The Last of the Tribe is a riveting, brilliantly told tale of encountering the unknown and the unfathomable, and the value of preserving it.
Critics say:
“The Last of the Tribe is ‘Avatar’ for grown-ups, a tribe-in-peril-story with real people, complicated motives, and every bit of subtlety and nuance left out of James Cameron’s cliched script. Reel’s tale is expertly told: perfectly timed, thoroughly researched and descriptively written. Back stories, personal histories, character development and political context are deftly woven into the narrative, and each departure from the quest feels appropriate at the time.”
– The San Francisco Chronicle
“Reel smoothly translates the complexities of the Brazilian frontier into an adventure narrative, without slighting his material. While the dramas of the rain forest and obscure Native American groups may seem distant to New York and Los Angeles, Reel demonstrates how the life and death of a lone Indian in Rondonia have consequences for the entire world.”
– Publishers Weekly
“…Reel delivers a moving, well-constructed account of a latter-day Ishi in the embattled Amazonian rainforest… Unlike the story of Ishi, however, this one has a happy ending – a pay-off that isn’t entirely anticipated, given all the other tragic aspects of the tale.”
– Kirkus Reviews
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