Hong Kong director Peter Chan has begun shooting martial arts movie with Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei. The $20 million production named Wu Xia Film is produced and financed by Chan’s We Pictures and represents his first film as a director since kung fu film The Warlords, also starring Kaneshiro. Jimmy Wang Yu from the original film One Armed Swordsman will appear on the screen first time over 15 years.
Donnie Yen stars as a retired swordsman seeking redemption, who takes refuge in a remote village at the end of the world. Tang will act as the swordsman’s wife. Kaneshiro acts as the dedicated detective who is hunting Yen’s character down.
“Ever since martial arts movie Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, there have been no great kung fu films for almost a decade, so I wanted to try. I want to combine action, science, medicine and special effects to show just how strong wu xia moves are, to show how different the effect of one strike is on the body of a person who has trained in the martial arts and someone who has not,” Chan told reporters.
Chan states that he hopes to demonstrate the physicality and lethality of the martial arts, and expresses a wish to give the martial arts genre a “reboot” with Wu Xia Film.
Wu Xia is set for release in the second half of 2011.