The writers of Ali and Nixon have been hired to write an “origin story” about Bruce Lee. Well, sort of. It actually sounds more like the origin of a story where Bruce Lee becomes some kind of crime-fighting Van Helsing, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
QED International and banner Groundswell Productions are aiming to tell a Bruce Lee origin story with Birth of the Dragon, tapping scribed Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen Rivele to pen the tale.
Birth of a Dragon, according to QED and Groundswell, is inspired by the true-life duel between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man, who was China’s most famous Kung Fu Master. The no-rules fight took place in San Francisco in 1965, when the city’s Chinatown was controlled by Hong Kong Triads.
Okay, so far so good… They already did a version of that in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, based on Linda Lee’s book, but I’d love to see a less biased version…
The writers are using this true event as a jumping off point for a wider canvas action movie in which Wong and Lee team up to battle a band of Chinatown gangsters.
“Stephen Rivele and Chris Wilkinson have taken a little known chapter in the life of Bruce Lee and used it as a jumping off point for a bold, exciting story about the making of an international legend,” said QED CEO Michael London in a statement. [THR]
Well sure, why depict a real, unique story with interesting characters and inherent drama when you can just slap the names on a Bruckheimer movie that everyone’s already seen? A movie about Bruce Lee? Pf, no one’s going to want to see that! Not unless you can turn it into a Chinese Gangster Squad with Kung Fu. It’s got the blandness people love, with the meaningless name recognition they demand.
Studio thinking at its finest.
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How many handjobs does one have to give to achieve the rank of Master Wong Jack Man?
My nominee for comment of the week
If you have to ask, then you shall never achieve this honour.
Jesus Christ Gor, do you give out those kinds of secrets to just any jackass making a handjob joke? What the fuck kind of business sense is that?
From one of the links:
“I’d gotten into a fight in San Francisco (a reference, no doubt, to the Bay Area rather than the city) with a Kung-Fu cat, and after a brief encounter the son-of-a-bitch started to run. I chased him and, like a fool, kept punching him behind his head and back. Soon my fists began to swell from hitting his hard head. Right then I realized Wing Chun was not too practical and began to alter my way of fighting.”
I had a similar encounter with chasing (just-a) cat in my formative years, but mine involved more of me squealing “KITTYYYYYYYYY!!”, and a reevaluation of my BBQ Wing style due to the sauce on my fingers making the cat difficult to hold. But that experience really stuck with five-year old me, I’ll tell you what.
*reflects fondly*
*absentmindedly licks fingers*
[img]http://imgflip.com/i/nbtr[/img]
你的家庭的 HTML 是没用！你不会玷污我家的分级页面格式！
(Your family’s HTML is no good! You will not dishonor my ancestors’ Cascading Style Sheets!)
Erswi, you are awesome.
how do you post images properly on this site so that they display?
Not everyone can embed images in their comments.
Wait, did you say Jerry Bruckheimer? Oh is this made by Disney?!
If that’s the case I can’t wait to see what kind of offense racial stereotypes Johnny Depp exhibits when he plays an Asian man!
Chinese Gangster Squad will have a token Filipino who is also good at knife fighting.
Two Wongs Don’t Make a White
/drops mic
//shows self to diversity training, again
“Oooh yeah Missa Bluckheimer, you rike it rike dis?”
SPOILER ALERT! Those other guys weren’t really gangsters at all, and Bruce & Jack apologize for Wong/Lee accusing them.
“Ali” was a HUGE letdown. Mann is one of those directors who lost it, no longer make good films. Heat and Mohiccans were his last good efforts.
Dragon was one of my favorite movies as a kid. It’s totally the reason I wanted to become a kung fu master but instead ended up as a computer programmer. HEEYA!
*chops board, types bitchy comment*