Renowned director and action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping is busy trying hard to raise S$40million to shoot the wuxia remake of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, plus cast his dream team of actors in including actor Takeshi Kaneshiro as Linghu Chong, actress Zhou Xun as Ren Yingying, and singer Jay Chou as Dongfang Bubai.
The new remake of the classic novel by Louis Cha is slated to begin filming at the start of 2010 after the Lunar New Year festivities. In the meantime, Yuen does not plan to accept any other directing jobs in order to concentrate wholly in producing the series.
Yuen has expressed that 36-year-old Kaneshiro best fits the role of the lead character, Linghu Chong. Both parties are currently engaged in talks and if the actor agrees, Yuen plans to send him to Beijing for martial arts training sessions. As the show concentrates heavily on martial arts, Yuen hopes that the main actors will receive martial arts training before filming begins to present a more lifelike portrayal of the story.
He also has plans to invite Chinese actress, Zhou Xun, to take up the female lead role as Ren Yingying. He was so impressed by her acting chops and gracefulness in his previous collaboration with her, True Legend, and decided to work with her again.
As both Kaneshiro and Zhou previously collaborated as lovers in the movie, Perhaps Love, he feels that they have enough tacit understanding of each other to bring out the best of their lovebirds characters onscreen.
Apart from these, Yuen hopes that Jay Chou will take on the last remaining lead role as Dongfang Bubai in the show. The chance of Yuen gaining a nod of agreement from Jay lies relatively high as the latter is in awe and respect of the director. The Taiwanese performer also previously agreed to guest star in Yuen’s movie, True Legend.
88news.net
